


Stories and Moons through Seasons

by HarvestMoonAuntie



Category: Harvest Moon, 牧場物語つながる新天地 | Story of Seasons
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-16 06:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 52
Words: 45,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16948791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarvestMoonAuntie/pseuds/HarvestMoonAuntie
Summary: Gathering up all the drabbles I posted on Tumblr before that went all bum-up.Lots of pairings, lots of characters, all pretty short pieces. Hope you find something you like!





	1. Still: Skye x Farmer

So he’s a thief, but you’re okay with that, and that surprises him. After all, you’re so hard-working and ethical and righteously angry with him when he freezes you in your steps. But still, every night, there you are, waiting for him, hair mussed and messy from a day of honest work but beautiful with the moonlight flowing through it. His heart stops just a little, against his better judgment. He’s a thief, someone impermanent and flashy and temporary. Being a farmer, you’re his opposite, all solidness and security and connection to your land.

Still, he can’t help but want to talk to you, to get to know you better, to try a new line every night and find one that sticks. You’re so kind, trying to keep him out of the houses of your neighbors with little trinkets and gifts and meals. You try to make him promise, but he deflects you every night. He loses track of the time and focuses on walking closer to you, brushing your fingers with his when you aren’t paying attention. He loves the way you blush.

And with that simple fact, he tumbles into love with you less gracefully than he’s ever done anything. All at once, he loves you, your skin, your laugh, your half-amused sigh when he boasts of his exploits. It’s like he’s always loved you, and it’s like he’s never not known you. So when he sees a feather in your pack, resting carefully between your everyday items, he panics. You’re not looking at him tonight, avoiding eye contact and uncharacteristically chattering, and his heart sinks. He tries to think when you part ways with him, trotting back to your warm home and bed. He has to stop you, he can’t bear knowing there’s someone else, but what can he do?

He’ll steal your feather, then. It’s childish and silly and not really a solution if you love someone else, but it’s all he can think and before he can think another thought he’s sneaking in your window, rustling around in the dark and trying to steal from you, from you, from the only person who has ever held his heart and his mind in her hands. But he can’t find anything and he can hear you moving, so on a whim he scribbles down a note, something cheesy about stealing your heart, something you’d probably see right through but it’s all he can think to do. He flees; he’ll come back tomorrow and find it, then, take it before you can give it away.

The next night, you’re awake when he comes in your door, and his heart is pounding but he says something glib and sly and meaningless.

Before he can get too far, though, you interrupt him. Exasperated, you tell him that the feather is for him.

He can’t believe it. You’re beautiful and good and so much more than he.

Still. There you stand, and he crosses the room and takes your face between his palms and breathes you in, breathes in the color of your eyes looking up at him and breathes in your breath.

He’s only a thief.

Still. You love him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece was originally posted on my long-buried FanFiction.Net account, then bounced to Tumblr, and now it's here!
> 
> Featuring Skye, the trashbag thief from Harvest Moon: DS Cute.


	2. Bite: Pierre x Natalie

She speaks first. “I bite, you know.”

“Oh, really? Is that a promise?”

“Cut it out. I’m not flirting. I’m trying to warn you.”

“Well, everyone bites. It’s how we eat. Speaking of, how do you feel about a nice chocolate soufflé for dessert, with maybe -”

“Oh, shut up. Can’t you talk about anything other than food?”

“Erm. Not fantastically… But. I mean, I’m sorry, you were saying something.”

“Right. I bite. Not food, but I mean with words.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m not normal, you know? I don’t tell people what they want to hear. I’m critical, and I’m rude. Like those farmers? Every time I see them, I can’t help myself from saying something rude about their character, and they’re total strangers just doing their jobs.”

He laughs.

“What’s so funny? I’m trying to be serious here, you know. I’m trying to warn you.”

“You said that already.”

“Listen to me! You’re so nice and funny and you never just say things without caring if they hurt people. You wouldn’t like me.”

“Oh, honey - Er, do you mind if I call you that?”

“Honey?”

“Honey. Do you mind?”

“…You know, I don’t.”

“Okay. Oh, honey. I like how you talk. I like that you’re honest with everyone you talk to, and I like that when you say something, you mean it. I don’t think you’re mean. I think you’re honest without thinking of the consequences. And I wouldn’t change it. So you know what, honey?”

She’s whispering now. “What?”

“I like your bite. It’s like citrus - sharp and clear and sweet. Just like you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never really got the Pierre and Natalie relationship (from Sunshine Islands and Island of Happiness), so I wrote this drabble long ago to try to understand it!
> 
> I mean, I still don't really get it, but whaddayagondo?


	3. Walls: Neil x Iroha

A long time ago, he figured out that it was easier if he didn’t care if anyone liked him. If he didn’t care if they hated him, if they thought he was rude or obnoxious with skin like a rusty nail (don’t touch), then, fine. He could be barbed. He would build a wall so tall and thick that no one could ever reach him, buried deep through on the other side. He made a bear of himself, deep in hibernation, deep into his own winter, and anyone who tried to wake him got snapped.

It’s easier to live that way, than to try to understand people. When he was born he had a defective eardrum, and even when they fixed it, fixed it by the time he was five, he never learned to hear people right, to talk so that they understood his tone. So he grew up stubborn and quiet and resentful of the easy way some people talked, words dropping like pebbles from their mouths. Quiet, alone, safe in his walls, he can do that. Opening and closing his shop, animals bought and sold, life that flows around him like a moat, carving out a path he’ll never walk beyond.

He met her when she was passing by him, walking out to the forests or the mountain when he was heading home. She walked as if she’d never fallen before and glanced at him with dark, dark eyes like a thunderstorm, and she did not smile when they met eyes. But that was fine, he didn’t smile, either.

For a while they had those passing moments, and passing was all they did, flowing in separate directions. He knew her from around the village, knew that she was a craftswoman, that she worked with metals to make things that were better. He didn’t know a lot about her, other than the farmer’s chatter at him about her sometimes.

And then one day she came into his shop and said, “Do you need a better fence?”

He looked at her, at the way she held her hands like she was holding a hammer, and said, “For what?”

“Your animals. The farmer, they said you could use a new fence for your livestock. I’ll do it for you.”

“Why would you want to do anything for me?” he said. “I don’t need your pity or your help.”

“I don’t pity you. Why should I? You’re no different from anyone else. The farmer just asked if I could help you out and I don’t want to let them down.” She shrugged her shoulders, strong and steady (she was like a wall, tall and proud and she stood like she’d never fallen) and for some reason he said that he supposed he could use a new fence, if she was handing them out.

And then he was seeing a lot more of her. She didn’t talk much, which he appreciated; she’d ask him about how much further this way he wanted the fence, and which animals would need to be moved elsewhere for her to work. He got to standing out there with her, watching the way she worked – she focused so intensely on her work, like she’d gone to some other place – and sometimes she’d say something absently, almost as if to herself. “Flowers or fish?” “Dogs or cats?”

And he’d answer, one word, and she’d nod or say, “Huh, would have pegged you for a cat person.” And then she’d go back to her work.

It was like lowering a heavy burden to the ground, gently, gently. After the fence, she made a new trough for him, and he was visiting her house to watch her make it. And then they were walking to the mountains together, and he was asking, “Do you like noodles? Would you like it if I made you noodles?”

And he wanted her to like him.

And when he told her that, one night, late, when they were walking back to the village from the mountains, she looked at him with her eyes like black rocks, her eyes like something deeper and more constant than he’d ever known, she said, “If you wanted, if you asked me to, I’d be your walls for the rest of your life, and I would keep you safe and warm.”

He smiled and, hesitantly, brushed his fingers against her hand. Told her, “You’re beautiful.”

And her smile back was easy, and bright, and soft, and the ringing in his ears sounded like walls tumbling down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a request from harvestmabel over on Tumblr, requesting for a Neil fic. I miss the rival system, but this was my guess at who Neil might fit well with, back from before I played A New Beginning... How'd I do?


	4. Wild: Kana x Georgia

He’s like wild lemongrass, a little sour, a little biting, sunny and hot. He grew up outdoors, rough and hardy and muddy, and being inside too much feels like a cotton blanket over his head. It’s all he can do to run his shop, all the windows open because there are people who don’t understand why he likes to sleep in the barn, why the heavy breathing of horses makes him feel like he is safe.

She lives across the mountains, but he meets her when he began to explore the peak – she’d been trying to find herbs and berries, she’d turned her ankle in a gopher hole and cried out for help. He is the one who heard her.

Her voice is soft and twanging, a birdsong of a voice, and with tears running down her face, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands (tanned, calloused, she works with those hands), she says, “Oh. Hello. I… I hurt my ankle.”

He nods, says, “It’ll be okay.” He speaks, unintentionally, like he speaks to his horses, voice deeper and softer and smoother. “Shh, shh, I’ll get you to the doctor in Konohana.”

She wrinkles her nose, frowns, but nods – her ankle is swollen the size of an egg. Gently, gently, he wraps an arm around her shoulder, picks her up, tries not to jostle her ankle but still she hisses.

The walk back, at first, is quiet – she seems nervous to be touching him, her hands in her lap, biting her lower lip and avoiding looking at her ankle – when she does, she closes her eyes and breathes deeper.

“I’m Kana,” he says as they reach the peak, beginning the descent. “You’re Georgia, right?”

She nods, glares. “You said your horse was cuter than mine,” she says. “That’s what I know you from.”

He laughs and says, “Well, I apologize for offending you.” But she doesn’t speak to him until they’re nearing town, and he can barely even remember when he said that. Still, he’d be just as mad at anyone who said his horses were less, and so he doesn’t try to change her mind.

They reach the doctor and he drops her off – when he next sees the farmer, he asks them to carry a message to Georgia’s father, so he knows that she’s safe.

And because he feels bad, because he hurt her feelings about her horse, he visits her while she’s at the doctor’s. Her ankle is only turned, so she should be able to walk on it in a few days, but it’s boring there, inside, and so he visits, opens her windows (though that annoys Ayame) and brings her flowers – once he tries to sneak in a dog.

And it’s only a few days, but he likes her, thinks her birdsong voice is perfect and that her hair looks like autumn falling down over the mountains. He asks if he can see her again.

And though he’s sour, though he is rough and says what he thinks, though he’s not sure that she’s forgiven him for the long-ago comment about her horse, she says that he can.

And he does.

And a wild love grows between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring Kana and Georgia from Tale of Two Towns! Another one from before I'd actually played the game the characters were in...


	5. Bright: Lloyd x Sherry

When she was younger, all of her loves were the ones who had swallowed the sun into their bellies. Their energy burst from them in rays that crisped the edges of her, made her want to hold something hot like that between her fingers. In stories, in books, her favorites were the men who joked and laughed and made light of the world around them.

He’s not like that. He’s no one’s sun, no bright light peeking through him, and yet he has a softness, a warmth that feels like a trembling heartbeat under her hands. It’s a fragile thing, what grows between them, something of gentleness and starshine, and that fascinates her. She can look at him without blinding herself; she can kiss him without burning her tongue.

He never swallowed any sunlight, keeps no great burning inside his chest, but he grows warmer when she is near him, talks more, smiles wider, and while he is different from the sunshine boys she loved as children, the tender silver of him, the way he sculpts and moves like water, that’s what she falls in love with. She falls in love with the glow of him, and he makes her shine brighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A super short one from Grand Bazaar. Man, I liked taking shots at characters based on their Fogu pages...


	6. Soft: Kai x Maria

She is the sort of person who lives better in her mind than in her skin. She is kind, she is gentle, she makes cotton of herself so as not to hurt the people around her, and that softness keeps her safe and insulated from sun and heat and hardness. She speaks carefully. She speaks quietly.

She didn’t like him the first time she met him. He was easygoing smiles and bright, harsh sunlight, and he said things without thinking, like, “Who could stand to be cooped up in here, no air, all day?” and “A little sand in a book’s spine never hurt anything.” He leans on the counter and chats with her, grinningly oblivious to the smudges of dirt he leaves on the papers there from working in the vineyard.

And he keeps coming back, which at first is grating to her – he calls her “Ria,” tugs at the edge of his purple bandanna and says, “I liked that last book you recommended to me, do you have any others like it?” And he listens to her recommendations and he brings the books back within three days, no matter their thickness. He voraciously devours the words that she keeps closest to her heart.

And then he’s staying later to talk about those books, those words, with her. He leans on the counter and she doesn’t notice the dirt anymore because she’s looking into the bright chocolate of his eyes, falling into the smooth confidence of his voice. It’s like being drawn out of a cave into the summer, like waking up from a deep, dreaming sleep.

When he sees that she’s been fixing up the books, a bit battered, that he returns, he gasps and says, “Oh, hey, Ria, I’m so sorry, did I do that? I know how important your books are, I didn’t mean to hurt them.” And he’s earnestly sorry, he’s biting his lip and frowning with concern down at the book in her hand, her favorite book, the book he said he loved like a little bird loves breezes. He’s got something gentle in him, under callouses and it took her too long to see it.

And she smiles softly at him, and he looks up and smiles at her, and from there their gentle story grows and grows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A request from someone on Tumblr for Kai x Maria! I never played Back to Nature, and I was so used to Kai and Popuri, Mary and Gray, that this was a fun experiment!


	7. Taking: Michelle x Yuri

A hungry child learns to take what she can. A lonely child learns that no one is there. So that’s who she is, as an adult, a woman who takes what she can from people, who eats what she wants and casually brushes affections away from her shoulders like crumbs, like lint. She’s never going to be hungry again, she knows, she decided that when she was small and alone that she would always have a fully belly and that no one could throw away her heart because she’d never give it to anyone. It would be hers, kept close in her chest, kept like a secret, a place no one is sure exists.

Right now she doesn’t know it, but she will love a woman with eyes like deep secrets of her own. The woman she will love will have tender hands, softer voice, and no one will ever tell her that she must give anything for free. Not words, not sweets, no, this woman is the sort of fire that sweeps without a whisper through the forest. This woman with her quiet and her iron will is the sort of woman who gives nothing for free.

And when they fall in love, when they hold one another as if the rest of the world spins too fast for a hungry once-child and a quiet fire-soul, they take from and of each other, and they are healed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the first queer drabble I posted... Don't worry, it only gets queerer from here. ;)


	8. Curious: Calvin x Phoebe

It’s summer and they’re deep in the mines together – he brought water bottles and she’s pressing one to her forehead, green hair plastered in swirls to her temples. It’s been a productive day and maybe it’s the mine airlessness or maybe it’s the fact that it’s been weeks and she hasn’t worked up the nerve to say it yet, but she says, “You know, I was in your class.”

He looks at her sharply, eyebrows furrowed, and for a moment she thinks that she has ruined the mood, the easiness between them that she’s been growing so fond of. He says, “What do you mean?” and she can’t read his tone. What did she mean?

“Oh,” she says, brushing beaded drops of sweat and cool water from her forehead, away from her glasses. “I knew you didn’t remember me.” It’s defensive but she can’t help it – when he’d first come here, she recognized him right away and made an offhand comment to the stranger, to the person she used to know, but he’d acted as if he didn’t know her and she’d just let it drop. Besides, he still asked if she knew good places to dig around here, and even if he didn’t remember the bookish girl with the red glasses who’d sat at the front of his classroom, well, maybe that was for the best. “You taught Intro to Sociology, back at the University of Our Harvest Lady. I took that class.” That had been when she’d still wanted to be an engineer, when she thought that if she just brought back more knowledge, she could save her hometown. She’d run out of money and had to come back, and anyway, it seemed that time had been all this place needed, time and maybe the work of that charismatic farmer everyone got on about so much.

He’s quiet for a moment, looking at her with those flashing eyes. He’s always been handsome, even years ago when she was taking that class with him – though there’s hardness to him now, an edge to his jaw like someone who has made himself sharp on the world. He was younger then, so was she, but younger of soul by many years – she nearly didn’t recognize him when he’d first moved here, and then it was only because of his voice, deep and thoughtful and full of weight.

“I didn’t know anyone here knew about that,” he said at last, pushing his hat off his head to show hair wet with sweat. He takes a long drink of water, lips gleaming and he wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. “It was a long time ago. I was a different man.” Something serious to him, now, something heavy in his words.

She is curious. It’s who she is.

“Did something happen?” she presses, rubbing her water bottle over the back of her neck to cool her heating head. “Why did you quit?”

He laughs humorlessly. “I was fired, didn’t quit. I…” This time, a real chuckle. “I kind of had a…relationship with one of my fellow professors. My department head, actually.” He blushes (hard to see in this dim light, but she’s so familiar with his face now). “They thought that I’d slept my way to the job. So. That semester might have been the only chance you really had to take my class.” He looks at her with those intense eyes she loves (wait, she loves? oh, she loves, shit, she loves) and frowns again. “I can’t believe I don’t remember you.”

She takes it as a compliment - her heart beats faster. “I was bookish and quiet,” she says. “I am not surprised.” She is curious, she says, “I take it that the woman broke up with you?”

He nods. “It was that or lose her job. But…” He sighs, leans back against the rock. His eyes are away, looking back through the murk of years. “But I loved her. So I thought she’d come with me, or at least… I don’t know, sneak around.” He shrugs. “But she wasn’t interested. So I moved far away and pretended I’d never been a professor at all.”

She chews her bottom lip, watching the steam from deep below the earth rising up through cracks. “That’s sad,” she says softly.

“Not so sad.” He’s moved closer to her, watching her face intently. “I got to meet you again.”

She smiles at him, kisses his cheek in a moment of weakness, of curiosity, and he kisses her back, and when they’ve cooled down, long time later, they resume their digging deeper together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This originally was a request from a Tumblr anon for "a super angsty (former) teacher and student," and I went with Calvin and Phoebe from Animal Parade and Tree of Tranquility!


	9. Fairy Tales: Kurt x Dia

If fairy tales have any reality, she reasons, she is the princess of one. Not in a vain way – not that she thinks she is that important, or that she is that beautiful.

But he is lying with her on her windowsill, his head in her lap, while she reads to him. His eyes are closed, brow smooth and without worry as it so seldom seems to be. She is reading to him from her favorite book of fairy tales, ones about woodsmen and faefolk who slip under doors in the night to braid flowers into your hair. She knows the stories by heart – they kept her, carried her, while she was heartsick with the loss of her parents, with the illness that wracked her body. She grew up wishing to be like the faeries who could dance under the moonlight, who lived and breathed the world around them with no windows to bind them or sickness to pull them down.

She knows the stories by heart, so she recites the stories and watches him. His hands folded over his chest, he smells like firewood, sawdust on his sleeves. his headband damp with sweat because he is here to visit after a long day of working outside. She doesn’t mind the untidiness of him, doesn’t mind that his hands sometimes leave stains on her clothes. She is watching the rise and fall of his chest, the trust that he has to lay like this with her, head on her lap, fingers brushing through his hair. She wants to wrap around him, a sheath to protect him out in the world, frail as she is, weak as she is.

If fairy tales have truth in them, then they are truths of this: girls who were never faeries, who were never the adored princess, murmuring stories to woodcarvers who were never the hero, who were never the bold prince. Their fairy tale is realer than that, their fairy tale is the sick girl and the quiet carpenter. Their fairy tale is theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's one featuring Kurt and Dia from Magical Melody, Hero of Leaf Valley, and Save the Homeland! I love what angsty little muffins they are together.


	10. Language: Phoebe x Candace

Phoebe hadn’t spent much time with Candace, not until she thought one day about a machine that might make the process of turning materials into yarn easier, and she wanted to sell such a machine to the tailors. She showed up, she’d lugged the thing down from the mountains, and while the seamstress was polite and quiet in her rejection, it was a rejection all the same. And Phoebe was more dogged than to be pushed off so lightly, especially when she’d brought the machine so far.

“I respect that you don’t feel like you want it,” she said to Candace, brushing the sweat from her brow, “but what if you tried it and ended up liking it? You won’t know unless you give it a chance. Can I leave it here, and come back and check on it?”

Candace was timid. She was taller than people thought she was – she hunched her shoulders sometimes. Phoebe thought it might be because of Luna, Candace’s younger sister, who was rather short and had the commanding personality that hated to be considered less than in any way. Candace seemed like the sort of person who would respect that in her own quiet way and make herself a little more compact.

Phoebe can’t really relate to that. Her parents are mild, her father more than her mother; Phoebe can’t imagine bending her shoulders like that, bending herself like that, just so someone else might feel a little bigger by comparison.

Candace said, “I guess you can leave it here. But, I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’re really going to get much use out of it. I’m the one who weaves the thread, and I like working with the yarn with my hands.” She smiled politely, but with a protective layer behind it like someone might smile nervously at an animal they think might attack. “You could check with the farmer. I heard they just purchased their first silk worm, they might have use for an extra thread maker. I could see with Owen about getting it transported, Kathy’s here all the time and she’d ask him for me.”

It was like arguing with the wind. Candace never quite said no, but when Phoebe came back again the next week, she saw that her machine had been repurposed as a table, or a vase for long-stemmed flowers. She quickly realized that the best way to do this wasn’t just to overpower Candace – Phoebe couldn’t stand to feel like she’d bullied her, and besides, just because Candace didn’t say no didn’t mean she’d said yes. Phoebe didn’t want to make her do anything she didn’t want to do. So Phoebe settled for making the trek down to the town, to the tailors’, more and more often to check on what Candace was doing (she did take the faster rail cart, once, but it made her sick and she couldn’t imagine how the farmer did that so often).

She wanted to see what else she might be able to do for Candace, and yet it always seemed that Candace was the one doing things for her. She’d show up, all prepared to figure out a lack in their shop, some way that she could make their lives easier, and then Candace would get her a cup of tea and sit by her, winding a new spool of thread and letting Phoebe chat about what was going on up in the mountains, about how Kathy and Owen were spending a lot of time together, weren’t they, about how that explorer fellow had somehow lost a button on his shirt again, go figure. And Candace would sit quietly and smile softly at Phoebe – Phoebe got very good at noticing the difference in Candace’s little smiles, how this one was only polite, how this one meant she was touched, how that one was amused but in a ‘you silly thing’ sort of way. Phoebe wanted to learn the language of her, learn all the subtle nonspeeches that Candace gave instead of words. Phoebe had always loved a puzzle, and Candace was the most puzzling, sweet, thoughtful person she’d ever met. Candace was a puzzlebox she couldn’t solve, but she didn’t frustrate Phoebe the way other unsolvable problems did. She only wanted more time with her, more of her, more and more and more.

So when she stopped asking about what she could do to change Candace’s life, when she stopped trying to push her into doing something more with herself, with her life, when she stopped trying to change the way Candace chose to live, that’s when Candace stopped slouching, called out, “Oh, Phoebe, good morning!” when she saw the inventor coming along the road. Candace opened more, stood straighter, smiled more brightly and with more truth behind it when she saw Phoebe.

And then one morning, as Phoebe was waking up and getting ready to go about her morning, there was a knock at the door. Phoebe got there first – her father was gone down to his shop and her mother had opened the general store for the morning. Blinking in the morning light stood Candace, her hair a little mussed and fiddling with her hands – she must have woken up so early to get here by now, it was at least an hour’s walk. Phoebe searched for signs of distress; though it was a newer tongue she’d learned to recognize Candace’s mussed hair for excitement, her fiddling hands for nervousness.

“Is everything okay?” Phoebe asked, stepping outside.

“I…” Candace stammered as she so rarely did around Phoebe anymore. “I wanted to ask you a question.” Phoebe leans in the doorframe, smiles in a way that she hope will be reassuring to this quiet, beautiful woman she has come to love talking to so much. “I wanted to ask,” Candace stutters, “if you’d like to get a drink with me some night at the bar.”

It was like swallowing a sunburst, like suddenly understanding the mysterious language of birds. “You don’t like alcohol,” Phoebe said, and Candace smiled weakly. “But I’d love to have you over for tea. Because you should know, I’d love to have you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quiet bunnybaby x green-haired nerdmaster, the ship I never knew I needed. This was a request for sassmasterkurapika on Tumblr!


	11. Living: Alex x Kurt

If nothing else, Alex is aware of his mortality. He takes his vitamins in the morning, he searches out raw herbs shown in studies to lengthen your life. He doesn’t want to die. He knows what that feels like, sort of, he knows that the guttural rattlings of the dead are not to be chased or grasped, he has felt a person stop breathing under his hands, felt a heart give its last heave.

He knows his life, and he knows how best to preserve it. He keeps himself in a glass jar, careful, safe. Seeing but never touching.

Kurt’s not like that. Kurt, he is scraped and bruised – Alex met him when Kurt had split his hand open with his ax on accident, a long bloody drag across his life line. Alex had stitched him up, scolding with his soft voice, “You need to take better care of yourself.”

Kurt was quiet. He lived as the sky does, moving and moving and sometimes solid, sometimes tearing open with tears or storms. Kurt knew that he was alive, yes, but there was a destruction in him, lumberjack, woodsman, man who chops into the living trees to repurpose them. Kurt knows how life works, how to be alive. He feels everything, feels it deep to the core of him.

Alex, mortal, scolding Alex, finds him intoxicating. Kurt is like summer thunderstorms, he’s like the ocean, he’s like salt in a wound. Kurt is sharp and bright as sunshine. His warmth creeps into Alex’s life in a way that the doctor doesn’t notice at first, not for a long time, like spring coming and melting snow and one day he’s looking around at all the grass he’s never seen this close before.

And it’s in Kurt’s brown eyes, in the brook-chuckle of his voice, in the way that he lives first-hand in his world, that Alex sees the kind of life he really wants to lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally a request on Tumblr for this couple from Magical Melody, Save the Homeland, and Hero of Leaf Valley!


	12. Broken: Gustafa x Nami

People think she’s mean. She’s like a paper bag pinned under a branch, fluttering, snapping in the wind, but she’s got bite, too, she’s got teeth and words and hair like blood. She wandered through this rural little village on her way to nowhere, to the ocean, to the stars, and while the innkeepers are friendly and the barkeep makes sure she gets home, she can feel eyes like spiders on her arms, on her downturned mouth. They think she’s mean.

She’s not mean. She’s sharp. She’s hard. She’s a broken bottle of wine. Made the way she was by the people around her, shaped and built and shattered.

He’s not. He’s natural, he’s been like this for as long as he’s lived, she thinks. He even looks like a flower, stringy skinny body and a huge petal of a hat, his hands as soft as leaves. He’s like a wildflower, perfect in his mortal imperfections, and his voice is low and rough as his beard.

She ends up talking to him a lot. He hangs out in the bar, too, and blushes when the pretty blonde waitress touches his arm – he’s delicate, gentle, soft, too soft for someone like her, she knows. She doesn’t want to be the shears that cut him down.

He tried to kiss her, once, a few weeks ago. She told him, I’m not like that waitress, I’m rougher than the farm girl, you know. I’m not going to keep your feelings in a soft little nest, I’m going to bring them out into the world with me, and the world hurts. He respected her answer, gave her space.

But she still likes to talk to him, likes to learn how he can see the world as an open pair of arms when all it’s ever been to her is a boot coming down. He doesn’t ask her again, doesn’t go any further than she asks him to – she likes that, and draws herself closer to him like he’s her blanket.

She’s the one who kisses him, eventually. She says, I hope you don’t think I’m mean, but I want to warn you that I’m broken.

He smiles, brushes so gently, so gently, her hair from her eyes. If you’re broken, he says, then I will love every piece of you and I will help you as much or as little as you want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's one featuring Gustafa and Nami, a pair from A(nother) Wonderful Life and DS (Cute)!


	13. Fire: Fritz x Elise

They were both new to the area, a few years ago. She with her dresses and mansion and her father’s final words (”no more crutches, don’t write to me until you don’t need me anymore”), he with patches and scratches and a head like an explosion. She didn’t like him at first. He was all joints and scabs and he burst into words when he was excited, quick and flashing as a firework. He tracked dirt all through her home when he dropped by to visit, and honestly he wasn’t even good enough to be a rival, honestly. What was he doing, farming, if he didn’t know how to do it well?

She learned young, never do anything you can’t already do well. That way lies rejection and failure and Father sneering down his nose, rolling his eyes at you behind his paper, Of course Elise is struggling, is anyone surprised?

Like her father, she was merciless – she quickly conquered the longer-lasting fields, sent servants out to check the crops regularly; once in a while she ventured out herself to breathe the mountain air and try to make something less polluted of herself. She carried a pouch of water to wash her hands after she’d touched the earth, she walked carefully on the path, poised and graceful and rarely was there dirt on her shoes.

One of those days, when she walked to take in the air and to be alone, she ran into the fire-headed farmer, the one with a constant scratch on his cheek. He waved at her like a tree in a storm, “Hey, Elise! Hey! It’s me, Fritz!” She pretended not to hear him and he caught up to her, asking about her, about her day, her experience as a farmer so far. He said, “I was never much good at sciences at school, but this kinda makes sense to me so far! If you don’t get too much into the bolts of it, I guess.”

He wasn’t exactly pathetic, more like a hungry puppy who pressed hard against your leg to remind you he was there. She thought of her younger sister, how when she skinned her knee she cried and Elise carried her home. The fire-headed farmer looked hungry, needful, and she asked him if he’d like to come over for dinner.

She regretted it, at first. He was loud and grateful and spilled gravy on a doily from her favorite set, and he nearly broke a piece of china with one of his knobbly elbows. Her servants didn’t know what to think of him; her poor butler had that anxious look of alarm for the evening. But Elise found herself listening to Fritz, the way he threw himself into his words, his actions – hence the invitation for him to come back, maybe next week, same day, same time.

A routine. He never seemed to look any less pitiful, that constant bandage on his cheek, the way he blushed in embarrassment when she asked him about his crop-planting strategies (why did he never till all available land, only planting in erratic patches? It drove her mad), and yet with each dinner, each time they passed by each other in town, Elise was less irritated with him. Maybe not irritated at all.

One morning he came by her home early, let in by a maid who winked at Elise over his head as she left – Fritz asked, “Would you like to go on a walk in the mountains with me?”

He gave her wildflowers. He told her that she was effortless and sweet as breathing, that he was no good with words but he wished he’d been a poet for her. He told her, “I’ve never met anyone as strong as you, as proud, as brave.” He told her that he couldn’t believe anyone in the world could look at her and see her for anything but a woman with a brain and a gentle heart.

Fire, fire in her veins, in his eyes. No one had ever looked at her like she could not fail. No one had ever told her that even if she did, it would be okay.

She held him, let him hold her, and they walked together to her house for dinner later in the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally a request, this drabble features Fritz and Elise from Story of Seasons!


	14. Cold: Vaughn x Sabrina

Growing up, Vaughn was too restless for reading, too lonely for talking. Too weary for words, he kept to himself, kept his head tilted down and his eyes cold and sharp. He had been alone a lot – one of his foster parents, at some point, whispered to another adult that he was better suited for the animals, wasn’t he, that he knew their body language better than the subtle tilting heads and murmured hushes of humans. At the time it had hurt – he wanted so badly to be held in loving arms, and back then, he was only a kid, he cried at night when he thought about how he’d misunderstood his foster mother’s face and how she called someone to come bring him back to the orphanage the next day.

Now, everything is chilly, tingly, like he’d been left in the snow for so long that he feels warm. It is a way to survive. People only leave you, people only frown and look at their friends, silently, Can you believe he said that? They can’t touch him if he doesn’t let them, he can stay in his head and with his animals, he can hold the memory of his parents tight inside him and maybe, maybe they’ll know that he really loved them, that way. It’s silly, childish, but since they died when he was young, he thinks they wouldn’t want him to love anyone else as much as he loved them – maybe if he could only prove that he still loves them most, they won’t hate him for still being alive while they were dead.

Life tosses him around, slab of ice on the water, and he ends up an animal dealer – he moves around a lot, and more than once he’s refused to sell to someone he just knows lashes kicks out at cats when they get under his feet, so he doesn’t have any money, but he floats along, an iceberg, he freezes out anyone who would try to see below his depths. There’s an island, remote, yet sadly not overrun by the animals – instead there are people, scraping houses and lives out of the rubble of a long-abandoned town. He goes there twice a week, works with a local woman and her daughter, wanders around when he’s not doing business with the chatty farmer.

There’s a girl he sees a lot, sitting on the beach. The first time he came and she was there, she sensed him (he’s a quiet person, he’s always been quiet since it kept him from a few beatings back in the second of his many foster homes, how did she know to turn and meet his eye?) and ducked her head. Her black hair, long and winding as windstorms in the middle of the night, whipped around her and she snapped shut a book, stood and walked to the other side of the beach to curl her legs under her and sit down again. He didn’t mind, he wasn’t offended, something like that couldn’t pierce the ice. So he pretended he hadn’t noticed and did his own consideration of the ocean, thinking of the glaciers that kept the ocean colder further north of here.

She’s there a lot, when he comes by the beach. And then he starts seeing her in town more, helps her to her house when she feels faint, fixes a little pendant of hers. Little things. But he’s too cold, he’ll freeze her to death. She’s small and fragile and warm and nervous as a bird, birds don’t stay where it’s cold, he knows that.

One day he’s there at the beach and she looks at him from the other side, sand and spray between them, a book clutched in one hand. She looks at him, her hair wild in the wind and ocean, and something stirs him to stand and walk to her. She looks up at him, so nervous, so flustered and he hasn’t even said anything.

“Why do you keep staring at me?” he says, blunt and cold as he ever was, and he can hear it in his voice, hear the cold, but he can’t stop it, he can’t be someone else.

“I… I don’t mean to stare, or make you uncomfortable,” Sabrina stammers, pale cheeks flushed hot and as Vaughn frowns down at her, he wants to gather her hair in one hand, hold it back from her face.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” he says. Blushes, realizes that he means he isn’t uncomfortable around her, and he isn’t, but that’s odd, isn’t it? He sits, looks away from her and out to the ocean. “Are you?”

“No.” She answers quickly, but he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t look. “I… I’m not uncomfortable around you.”

Now he’s the one blushing, pulling his hat down further over his eyes. “I’m not very nice,” he tells her, and it’s stupid, it’s the wrong thing to say but he can’t help it, it’s too late, he’s speaking, he says, “If I haven’t already I’m going to hurt your feelings at some point. I don’t know how to read people, they’re not like animals, they’re stupid and I can’t tell what I’m doing wrong. Just so you know.”

The shhh shhh of the ocean, that’s all there is for a few moments. He wants to stand up and run run run, run for the rest of his life. At least he tried to warn her, at least he hurt her before she could hurt him, but it’s coming, he can feel it, she’s going to call him strange or he’s going to finally look at her again and there will be that look on her face, the look he’s seen a thousand times over that says What a beast, no wonder he’s alone, no wonder no one but animals wants to be near him, no wonder his parents died to escape him.

She says, “I’m stronger than people think I am. And I’ll tell you, if you hurt my feelings, so you know what hurts them. Do you want to hurt my feelings?”

“What?” It’s so startling he looks at her, indignant, worried, Goddess does she think that of him? “No, of course I don’t want to, are you stupid?”

She shakes her head, smiles at her book. “I know you don’t. So if you say something that does, I’ll tell you what it is, and maybe you don’t have to do that thing again.”

It’s amazing.

It’s so quiet, such a simple thing, but she… He’s only spoken with her a handful of times, only seen her twice a week for hours from across the beach, and she says this thing, this warm and heartbreaking thing. It’s almost, almost like she is hearing not what he’s saying, not his flustered, angry, lashing defenses, but the man hiding in the ice who is so scared, terrified of being drowned, of dying, of being alone forever. For the first time in his life, someone wants to know who he is, someone hears his words as they are meant, not as social norms list them.

They talk more, then and at later visits on the beach. He tells her, the first person in a long time, about his parents, about growing up cold, and she tells him about her parents, a different sort of dying between them. They’re alone together a lot, they don’t always need to talk. And maybe no, he doesn’t melt, but he’s not as shivery as he used to be, he holds her warm hand in his and there’s a tremble in his heart that he hasn’t felt for a long, long time.

She’s like the air in his lungs, she’s springtime and summer and the ocean and sunshine. She sighs in his arms, she tucks her head under his chin and against his collarbone and it’s all he’s ever wanted, it’s all there is for him.

He doesn’t have to be cold anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally an anon request on Tumblr, this features Sabrina and Vaughn from Sunshine Islands and Island of Happiness!


	15. Mistakes: Luke x Gill

In small towns like ours, there’s no escaping mistakes. You’ve made all kinds of mistakes.

The small kinds from when you were a kid and thought it’d be a good idea to leap like a squirrel from one branch to another (you hit the branch at your chest, had the wind knocked out of you and fell ten feet to the ground, you bruised your breastbone and broke a rib and your father nearly cried with fear, you were only seven and you were laughing and sobbing at once), you’ve made those mistakes. 

The big ones, like when you kissed the girl from the bar and told her that her mouth reminded you of bleeding and she quietly stopped talking to you, you didn’t know that she wouldn’t understand, that she’d tell the tailor’s sister how odd you were (I hear the two of them are dating now, pink as a blush and red as blood).

And you try to pretend that you love your mistakes, the failings of your hands and mouth, you defend your actions and statements and say Well I guess I was just being stupid, who cares? You try to pretend that you don’t care that some people in our small town think you’re reckless to a fault, that you don’t care what they think of you.

But I’ve known you all your life, your shock of blue hair and the carelessness you have for your limbs. You’re breakable but you never seem that way, even when you’re lying on the ground wheezing because you nearly cut off your own foot with your own ax, you only ever seem wild and bright and alive. But you’re more careful with your heart than people know.

I make mistakes, too, of course. It’s tough for me to admit (you remind me often enough, biting a little roughly on my earlobe, holding my hand almost, almost too tightly) but of course I’ve made mistakes.

When I was younger and less practiced at hiding my anxieties, I would glare at you for being loud in class, I’d mutter to myself mean things about you (I didn’t believe them, not really, I was just alone and nervous and your loudness made me jump, shivered me). I would make sideways remarks about brains over brawn, about thoughtfulness and being prudent and you called me an old man, even when we were kids. I was only two years older than you, but I knew what you were talking about.

We grew up alongside each other, bright blue and pale yellow, warm as sunshine and cold as snow. There’s never been anyone who made me feel as close to reckless as you do, never been anyone who made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe because you try so so hard just to get me to smile. My father tsks and worries that I’m going to get hurt with you one of these days, hurt of heart or head or hands I’m never sure.

But I love you. And if this is a mistake, then it’s the best mistake I’ll ever make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love both of these rambunctious and fussy boys from Animal Parade and Tree of Tranquility!!!!!


	16. Starry Nights I

1\. Lonely

As he’d done each day since Frey had freed him from the Karnak tower, Leon visited the dragon’s temple. He tried to stop by as frequently as he felt he could – in the many years since he’d first fallen asleep, Ventuswill’s room was the place that felt the most like home, that had changed the least. The smell of spice and heat, the way the tiles had grooves in the marble from the sweep of the old lizard’s tail. Familiar, homey, something still the same. He could remember coming here and chatting with Ventuswill about the temple, about what he needed to do as her dragon priest, and what he’d actually done that she asked him to. Little, usually.

The sense of familiarity in this room was strongest in the fall, and it was in the middle of the season, as the last few leaves trembled on the branches of the trees, that he stood in the doorway of the temple and smelled the snow on the air, faint, but coming. Ventuswill was gone – he wasn’t sure she could be brought back, now. And where did that leave him? He’d sacrificed himself to give her more time, to keep her a little safe, and she’d gone and undone his work. So he was left, a man out of time, in a town that didn’t make much sense to him, with people who seemed to have known Venti as some sort of revered goddess or higher being than them. Dylas, Amber, Dolce, they knew something of what he felt, but they’d come from times more recent than his. The world they’d known, the worlds, were different, of course they were. And he couldn’t hold it against them, but they didn’t understand.

And with the old lizard gone, he couldn’t hold it against anyone. He could just stay here, left behind.

The snow would start to fall soon, he could smell it coming. Already (and it had only been a week) Ventuswill’s scent was fading from her room. How could that be? She’d been here so many years, so much time, too much for her to be swept away from the room like so much dust after only a week.

Staring up at the leaves, he didn’t notice Frey approach him. “Good morning, Leon,” she said, and he turned his startled jump into an easy grin and a stretch of his arms.

“Good mo… No, you know what? Let’s go with bad night, instead,” he replied with a wink.

“You always say that,” Frey teased back. “Don’t you ever get sick of being so clever?”

“Can’t say I do,” he smiled, gaze returning back to the leaves. “Don’t let me get in your way, if you’re entering the temple. Wouldn’t want to stop you in your duties.”

She instead turned, trying to follow his line of sight. “The leaves?” she asked, and he exhaled softly. He would have wanted to call it a soft chuckle, but truly it was a little gasp, like he’d been punched in the gut. “This time of year always makes me feel lonely.”

He looked down at her. Frey had been the one to speak to him most since he got here, besides Xiao Pai and Lin Fa, and more than them, Frey had questions for him about where he’d come from, about him. She was a smart woman, strong, clearly – and of course, Ventuswill had liked her. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear and Leon had the sudden urge to kiss the little spot where her jawline curved back to her earlobe, to ask her if she would want to talk with him about being alone – there was something in the softness of her eyes on the trees that made him think she’d understand.

But what he said aloud was, “I know exactly what you mean.”

2\. Forever

Gale had told her to meet him in the church, after nightfall, when the rest of the town had gone to sleep. He wasn’t quite like them, after all, wasn’t really one of the normal townsfolk – he wasn’t even sure if Mayor Hamilton would give him a marriage license, or let him rent the church. Not that he’d officially asked… It still all seemed so strange, the fact that he stood here in the church, having jimmied the lock, and tried to clean the place up to make it somewhere she would want to get married.

She had told him she had a dress she’d wear, that she’d meet him, and yet he was still so terrified. He trusted her, truly he did, with everything he had, everything he was. But how could she choose him? There was nothing worthy of her in himself, nothing that could hold up against her brightness, her smile, her dedication to the world around her.

He’d lived apart from the rest of the world for so long. Two years ago, he never in his life would have guessed that now, with snow in a heavy blanket on the ground around him, the town hushed as another cold winter night fell around them, that he’d be waiting nervously in the church for the woman he loved to come and marry him.

He looked down at the ring he’d made for her. She had given him a blue feather, in the way of the people here, to ask him to marry her. To marry her, to be with her forever. The word still had weight, even if forever meant something different for him than for her. How could she choose him? How could she choose to spend her life with someone like him, someone so quiet and cold, distant as the stars from the way the people on this island lived?

But she had. She had, and he believed in her, and Goddess, he wanted nothing more than life, forever, with her.

He had preserved the blue feather she gave him with a spell, turned it to a blue ring for her to wear. He practiced over and over again the words he would say to bind them in marriage, to bind his life and love to her for the rest of his days.

She came. Of course she came, walking with her winter bouquet (snow still stubbornly clinging to the hem of her long dress) down the aisle to meet him by the altar. He gave her the words he’d planned, speaking carefully, with the solemness of prayer. He asked her, “Will you stay with me?”

And she smiled, nodded at him. “Forever,” she whispered.

And they walked home together, through the silent town, with the stars glittering and spreading thousands of tiny sparkles through the snow, into their life.

3\. Sunshine

Angelo set up his easel and smiled, looking around him. It was spring, the last of the snow melting now to swell the river, and they’d come back to that spot where, all those years ago, she had told him she thought the stream was beautiful, too. She was still as beautiful as she’d ever been, blonde hair pinned back under her hat, and she sat by the steam with their child, humming a little song. They, his wife, his child (his family) were gathering flowers into his wife’s lap. All he’d said this morning was that he might go out, now that the weather was finally turning warm again, to sketch out a painting by the stream, and that had been enough for her to say, “Well, why don’t we join you? Have a family picnic?”

He’d never been so warm as he had since he met her. He wasn’t a cold person, not at all, but before her, there was just…less in his life. Less laughter, less sunshine, less air to breathe. And now there she sat, by his favorite spot on the river, smiling at him from the corner of her eye as if she needed to pretend she didn’t notice him. They’d been married for a few years now, but the little sly looks, the way she could still make his heart pound like a teenager’s, she never failed to impress and fascinate him. And their child was taking after her, all smiles and bouncing and laughter. He held his sketchbook on his lap, looking from his family to the page, making rough, sweeping lines for his next project. Hours could have passed and he wouldn’t know the difference, trying to capture the bursting happiness he felt, the glow of love that had burned in him for so long he didn’t know how he’d lived without it.

His child came over, draped a flower crown over his head and said, “I made this for you, Daddy! What are you drawing?” His wife came over, bent down to admire the page, and he couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t believe the sunshine enveloping him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These three short drabbles were originally gifts for a Tumblr user through the HM Starry Nights group! One features Leon, from Rune Factory 4; one features the Wizard, from Animal Parade; and the last features Angelo, from Grand Bazaar!


	17. Warmth: Kai x Jack

Looking out at the snow outside, new flakes beginning to fall in the early evening, Kai muttered, “This sort of thing is exactly why I pretend that I have a medical allergy to the cold.” He burrowed deeper into the extra woolen blanket that Jack had draped around his shoulders after the farmer had ended his work early to come home and spend time. Jack chuckled from the kitchen, putting on the kettle to heat water for cocoa.

It was Kai’s first winter in Forget-Me-Not Valley since he’d moved in with Jack in the early summer. He remembered in the fall, only a few weeks ago, how they’d woken up to find frost at the edges of the window. He’d commented, “It gets so cold here,” and Jack had smiled, kissed his temple, said, “I’ll keep you warm,” before leaving to go about his chores. Kai still wasn’t used to Jack’s early hours, the up-before-dawn, just-a-quick-break pace of his work. As the proprietor of his little shack, Kai was used to setting his own schedule – though he guessed that was what Jack was doing. An early start to the day just meant more daylight hours to get things done.

There wasn’t much sunlight around now, though. He’d never been one for the cold, usually gone before the summer started to fade, but Jack was tied to his land, his earth, and Kai wasn’t going to make him uproot any of that. Still, in bed under three thick blankets and feeling the cold in the air around his face, Kai couldn’t help but think of the brilliant sun of summer in the town where he’d normally stay at this time of year.

“It’s not so bad, once you get used to it,” Jack said from the kitchen, the kettle ratting on the stovetop.” He smiled that earnest, honest smile and left the kitchen to sit by Kai on the bed. “And I told you, I’ll help as much as I can.”

“What, can you tilt the earth back to bring back the summer?” Kai grumbled. He recognized that he was being grumpy, that Jack hadn’t asked him to stay here in the valley, that it had been Kai’s own choice to stay here with the man he loved. But the weak-tea, gray sunlessness was getting to him, and he’d been sleeping in later, missing more of Jack, staying at home to doze or read and try to stay warm.

Which reminded him. “Hey, isn’t this early than you usually get back?” He checked the clock – it was only five o’clock, barely past when the shipping was picked up. Jack normally had lots of errands still going on, usually related to putting his animals away and making sure his crops were tended for the coming day.

Jack grinned and leaned down, kissing Kai’s forehead just at the edge of his bandanna. “I wanted to come back and cheer you up,” he said softly. “I did promise you I’d help keep you warm.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally a request from disabledmettaton on Tumblr, here's a fic about Jack and Kai from Friends of Mineral Town!


	18. Magic: Chase x Wizard

After knocking on the Wizard’s door, Chase shifted from foot to foot anxiously, glaring at the pot in his arms. He’d stuffed it with a variety of food – more vegetables than could reasonably fit in one dish, some fruits, a few eggs, most of a bottle of milk, flour, sugar… Half his emergency pantry, really. If this wasn’t his favorite, industrial, half-the-town-is-snowed-in-the-bar-and-they’re-all-hungry pot, it wouldn’t have been able to hold all of it. In his front apron pocket, he’d tucked a few utensils and a versitile pan.

He didn’t need to be this nervous. How many times had he made much more complicated dinners for critics or important people and never broken a sweat? Food had been the focus of his life for so long that he dreamed in tastes, and with the tools and ingredients he’d brought, he could make half a dozen of his best recipes with his eyes closed.

Still. He was nervous.

It had only been a few moments when Wizard opened the door. Chase was always surprised by the fortuneteller’s height, his slim, lanky build, like a long gray shadow sliding through the world. “Thank you…for coming,” Wizard said in his quiet, almost hushed voice, smiling softly. Chase was reminded of how soft everything was about Wizard – he caught himself lingering on the sloping curve of Wizard’s mouth and flushed, ducking his head to push inside the home.

“Of course,” he said, putting too much effort into making his tone sound light, haughty. “When you mentioned to Yolanda that you never cook for yourself, of course she insisted that either Maya or I come over for you one of these nights, you know how she is.” He looked around the room – there were books and starcharts everywhere, and the crystal ball that usually sat on the table in the center of the room had been moved to a pillow on a bookshelf. A hot plate sat in its place, though Chase couldn’t tell what was powering it.

“I’m glad you…volunteered to be the one…to come over, then,” Wizard said, and did Chase detect a hint of amusement in his tone?

“Well, if Maya gets charged for poisoning you to death, I don’t know who will do my tastetesting anymore,” Chase said airily, turning to set down his pot on one of the chairs pulled up to the little table. “Now, I’ve brought a variety of things to show you how to cook, so why don’t you tell me how you feel about these?” He laid out the ingredients quickly on the table, avoiding looking too closely at the tall man leaning against the closed door.

Except now that man was coming up behind him, leaning over Chase’s side to look at the raw ingredients laid out there. “I have…no opinions…about food,” he said, and Chase could feel the warm air of his breath on his ear. “I really don’t…eat much besides…coffee and the…occasional…Fugue mushroom.”

Chase’s cheeks were as red as the blacksmith’s hair. “C-coffee and mushrooms?” he stammered. “That’s, uh, not a lot.”

“No,” Wizard murmured. Why did he sound so amused? “Hence I told…Yolanda…I don’t eat much.”

“An understatement,” Chase breathed. “Well, then. I guess I’ll just…work with what I have and start there.” He turned his chin, Wizard’s face only a spare few inches away. “Um…”

“Should I…give you some space?” Wizard said, blushing and pulling back. He ran a hand through his silvery hair. “My…apologies, I was…curious. It all seems…like a spell to me.”

Chase scoffed. “It’s hardly magic. I’ve been doing this since I was nearly a baby. With what I’ve got here, I can show you how to make an easy vegetable soup that’ll show you it isn’t anything special, just throwing things in at the right times.”

“That doesn’t mean…it’s not special,” Wizard said, sitting down in one of the chairs.

It would be the first time of many that Chase and Wizard would meet for dinner – Wizard never seemed to remember the steps to that vegetable soup, and Chase never seemed to mind repeating them. It became a ritual of closeness between them, a magic spell they cast together, and Chase was learning more all the time about magic, and how very soft it could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a request from flareons on Tumblr for a piece about Chase teaching the Wizard from Animal Parade how to cook!


	19. Careful: Neil x Rod

Neil awoke one drizzly spring morning to a loud cry from outside and the soft sound of a dog whining at his door. Grumbling at the early hour (even that peppy farmer wouldn’t be up for an hour or two yet), Neil pulled his coat on and cracked his door to see a little brown dog licking at a collapsed person on the path not ten feet from Neil’s door – the goggles and spiky hair (hardly flattened at all by the rain) gave it away. “Rod!” Neil yelped, stumbling out into the mud and wet barefoot to kneel and roll Rod from his side onto his back. He groaned (that was a relief, at least) and Neil gasped, “Rod, what happened, are you okay?” He carefully lifted Rod’s head, searching for what was wrong. He had a big gash along his temple, bleeding badly, and his ankle seemed at a wrong ankle. A bundle had fallen into the mud, under Rod’s leg.

Rod chuckled, though it was a tense sound. His dog hadn’t left, leaning his head against Rod’s side and whining still. “Tripped, some hole,” Rod said. “Hurts, though, must have hit a rock.”

“Keep talking,” Neil said. “It’s good that you can keep talking.” He slid one arm behind Rod’s shoulders and the other under his knees. “This might hurt but I’m going to get you inside and then call for the doctor.” Without more warning than that he stood, and Rod hissed sharply. The dog half-heartedly growled and Neil ignored him, quickly getting Rod inside to press a clean cloth to his head and prop his foot up, laying him down on the bed.

Obligingly, Rod had continued to chatter, though in weaker a tone than Neil was comfortable with as he pulled some ice from the freezer and tied it in a cloth. “Slippery out there, isn’t it? I didn’t expect so much rain, I supposed when winter’s over it’s really over, but I didn’t expect so much mud . Poor Ace is probably so anxious, not to mention you, Neil, I really didn’t mean for this to happen, I’m real sorry for the trouble, I didn’t mean to be such a klutz, you must think I’m super silly.”

“What in the name of the Harvest Goddess were you doing over here so early?” Neil asked, pulling up a stool so he could dab at the blood, cleaning the wound at Rod’s temple gently. “The sun’s not going to be up for another hour yet, forget the rain.”

Rod laughed and looked away, a flush at his cheeks. “Well, uh… Do you know what day it is?”

“The fourteenth?” Neil said absently. “Why?”

“It’s, uh… It’s Harmony Day, and well, I maybe thought I might bring you something.” Rod looked out the window, toward the road, at the wet and crumpled little package he’d fallen onto before. “Just… Well, you mean a lot to me, and I wanted to let you know.”

Neil blinked and for a moment he forgot the early hour, the panic of seeing Rod collapsed on the road, the wet dog currently rolling around on Neil’s carpet. “O-oh…” he said. “Um…”

“I don’t mean to make you feel bad, or like you owe me anything – oh, gosh, I don’t want to make you feel awkward. It’s just, well, I’ve been feeling this way for a while, and I talked to Yuri about it and she said I should just tell you how I feel, but I don’t mean to put you on the spot or anything, either, so –”

Neil leaned down and pressed a kiss to Rod’s lips, silencing him for a moment before he pulled back with red cheeks. Rod looked astonished and a smile curled at the corners of his lips. “You can’t go slipping and falling all over the place, scaring me to death, just to tell me anything,” Neil said all in a rush. “Because, ah, I care about you, too. So. You have to be careful.”

Rod grinned and nodded, wincing just a little. “Careful. You got it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally a request from fandomficsgalore on Tumblr! Here's Neil and Rod from A New Beginning!


	20. Trust: Cam x Lillian

As a kid, Cam gravitated toward cats because earning their affection and trust was a triumph, an honor. He was a friendlier person in his youth, called charming on more than a dozen occasions – people tended to like him quickly, easily, and as spoiled as it made him sound, he wanted it to come a little harder. He recognized that he dwelt too much in his own head with these things, that there was nothing wrong with someone liking him, but still, there was something comforting in needing to earn approval, earn more than a brief glance. It made him feel as if he was better known, like maybe there was more to like about him than just what could be seen at a glance. He picked up a sense of aloofness from the cats he liked, and sure enough, it was harder for him to make friends now, harder to be liked in an instant.

Lillian seemed to like him when they first met, but then, she seemed to like everybody. She was energetic and sunny (he guessed you had to be to run a ranch), even making regular trips up and down the mountain by foot. She always seemed to have gifts for people, herbs, milk from her cows, little presents as she ran around and caught up with everyone. She never seemed to forget him, always with a little lavender or sage, a flower, something despite the spread of his stand or the aloof way he thanked her. Wasn’t she getting sick of him?

He began to look forward to her visits, to chatting with her about little things – soon he was even asking her to go out, just with him, just the two of them, to special places, working up the courage to hold her hand. She smiled up at him, those bright eyes, and he wanted to spill himself out to her, tell her things he’d never told anyone, talk about his whole life so that she would want to tell him more about herself, too.

He wasn’t sure when it was, but he fell in love with her easily, so simply, and he asked her, “Why did you push through all my bristles, my walls?”

She smiled, wrapped her arms around his waist. Standing on her toes, she kissed the corner of his jaw, whispered in his ear, “You are worth every effort. I wanted to know you and earn your trust.”

And she had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally an anon request for a piece featuring Cam and the farmer from Tale of Two Towns!


	21. Crush: Klaus x Raeger

Klaus had been a solitary bachelor for long enough that he knew how to cook for himself, and yet for the third night this week, he found himself walking to the local restaurant for dinner. For a few weeks now, he had found himself there, sometimes for more than one meal in a day, sitting at a table in the back of the room and eating delicious food. He wasn’t one for indulging in food typically – usually he didn’t have much appetite, preferring the smell of food to the taste of it. But here he sat, spending money on some truly tasty food, when his typical practice was to eat as bland food as possible at home so as to not affect his sense of smell such that he couldn’t continue working into the night.

And tonight he was finally going to admit, to himself and one other person, what exactly he was doing there so much.

His crush on the chef had taken root nearly a sesaon ago now, at one of the festivals, he couldn’t remember which now. He’d been distracted when in the mingling before the festivities got going, the chef Raeger had stood near him and struck up a conversation. Klaus wasn’t great with small talk, and Raeger seemed to pick up on that quickly – soon they were talking about philosophy, flowers, deeper things, and Klaus had more fun than he’d had at the last year of festivals put together. He’d actually been sad when the conversation ended and they both went their separate ways, and the next day Klaus wandered over to the restaurant to see if they couldn’t pick it back up.

And they did, more or less. Of course there were other customers to attend to, and Raeger was kept plenty busy, running both the orders and the kitchen, and yet it still seemed that Raeger could always spare a moment to smile across the room or bring over another cup of tea. Somehow, even though it should have been awkward to speak in so many little, in-between moments, and yet it wasn’t – somehow it still felt natural, engaging, easy.

Most social interactions weren’t this easy for him, and he wasn’t eager to lose them when they were. And so he’d started coming here so regularly that Raeger had started shooing other customers away from the table Klaus had begun to claim as his own.

And now, tonight, he intended to tell the chef that the reason he’d been coming here so much wasn’t just because the tea was excellent or the people-watching was interesting, but because he enjoyed talking to Raeger, enjoyed watching the way he breezed through the complex motions of cooking, enjoyed talking more to Raeger than he ever talked to anyone.

He’d been in more tense or dangerous situations before, and yet his stomach fluttered as he walked into the restaurant. Raeger smiled up at him as he always did, that crooked, almost teasing grin, and nodded to Klaus’s table. “What will it be tonight?” Raeger asked, wiping his hands on his apron and coming out from behind the counter. “Tea, or something stronger toinght? One of the farmers gave me a lovely bottle of wine if you’d like to try that.”

There was no one else here yet – a good window. Klaus straightened his back and adjusted his cravat, a nervous habit. “Raeger, I’d like to tell you something.”

“Oh?” Raeger was setting wine glasses down on the counter and pulling a bottle of something red out from behind the register – he pulled out a stool and sat down, gesturing to the other for Klaus.

“No, thank you, I’m too nervous,” Klaus said, picking a tile on the ground and making very serious eye contact with it. “I wanted to tell you how very much I’ve been enjoying our conversations these last few weeks. And, ah, I’d much appreciate it if we could have more of them in the future. Perhaps… Well, I must tell you, I, ah, I have developed certain feelings for…our talks. And for you.”

“Certain feelings? Like a crush, you might say?” Klaus looked up and Raeger grinned at him – he was holding a small ring, set with a small chip of a green stone the color of Klaus’s eyes. “Like a, I’m-going-to-get-a-ring-and-ask-him-to-go-steady-with-me sort of crush?”

Klaus smiled, small at first, then much bigger. “Yes. Exactly that sort of crush.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a request for Klaus and Raeger, from Story of Seasons, given to me by wtfrylanxx over on Tumbles!


	22. Flowers: Pete x Popuri

Like flowers, Popuri didn’t like the winter. She wanted to curl in on herself, bury her body under blankets until the sun started to melt the snow again. How was she supposed to drag herself out of bed so early when it would be too dark to see for hours?

He, the neighbor farmer, he seems to have little problem with winter.

Without fail, he was up and running around, and on days where he needed more feed, or to sell a chicken, he often turned up at the poultry farm before Popuri herself was up and about. More than one winter morning after he moved to town, Popuri might come downstairs, bleary-eyed and shivering, and find the farmer chatting with Rick, exchanging a handful of coins for a bag of feed. He’d look up at her on the stairs where she’d stop, waiting for him to leave with her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders – he’d tip his hat, smile, and leave.

The first winter he was in town they didn’t speak much – she assumed he was busy getting the farm in order, especially with how often he came back for more feed, selling chicks, that sort of thing. Always some little errand or another that brought him back to the poultry farm, to the point that even Rick thought he was a nice enough fellow.

Rick’s words, not hers.

The next year, he talked to her more through the spring and summer and fall, so that when he dropped by in the winter, she fought her way out of bed early enough to be less of a mess when he dropped by. They’d chat about how little she liked the winter, how the snow was pretty enough and maybe even building snowmen could be fun, but she was too cold, too dulled by the weak gray light of the sun so far away.

He brought her flowers every day, even in the depths of winter. She asked him, “How do you have these? How did you know how much I liked pink cats?” And he’d smile and only give her the flower, only smile and say that he’d see her tomorrow.

Later, after months of flowers and chats, of “I want to talk to you every day”s and “I can’t bear not seeing you”s, after they’d confessed their love and married, he finally told her that after the first day he saw her, dozy and cold at the top of the stairs in the winter, he knew that he wanted to bring a little more warmth to her days for the rest of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an anon request for some fluff between the farmer from Back to Nature and Friends of Mineral Town and Popuri!


	23. Believe: Fritz x Raeger

“I may not look like the type, but I know a lot about tea!” Fritz, the farmer, with his thatch of tangled red hair, his bright smile, was earnest in everything he did, and right now, he was being earnest in Raeger’s direction, leaning on the counter at the restaurant. No one else had come in yet, not at the odd hour of three thirty – the lunch rush was gone and the earliest dinner folks hadn’t come yet, and so it was just Raeger and Fritz.

“Oh?” Raeger said politely, cleaning a dish, only half paying attention. He’d known Fritz since he’d moved into his farm – Veronica, wanting to prevent the nest-headed kid from starving to death while they got his house set up, had paid for a room at the inn for him, and Raeger had been paid in advance to feed him for the week before the house was up. He’d eaten like a monster, like he’d never been fed before, and sometimes Raeger wondered about what life Fritz must have led before coming to Oak Tree Town. He had the scrawny, desperate look sometimes of a half-starved dog, hungry for affection and whatever scraps anyone had to offer, and since Raeger had fed him, he kept coming back, not always for food, but for conversation.

And yeah, food, too, most of the time.

“Oh, yeah,” Fritz said now, grinning, leaning on the counter. “People look at me and go, FRITZ, he doesn’t know about tea or anything like that. But I do. Know about tea, that is. I don’t know what stuff’s like that, but I probably know a little about it, just because I know about tea.”

Raeger raised an eyebrow. “I don’t doubt it,” he said easily. Fritz flushed as if doubting Raeger’s lack of doubt – what was it about Fritz that made him so eager to prove himself? Raeger had been fairly confident most of his life, lean and handsome and clever enough to skate through most situations without too much effort. Everything Fritz did seemed to require such a huge burst of energy that left him exhausted soon after. He was shorter than Raeger by at least a head – no wonder everything seemed to be in bursts with him.

“You shouldn’t. My tea knowledge is GREAT!” Fritz hopped up on a stool, tapping one foot anxiously against the floor. “I’m serious.”

“I believe you, Fritz,” Raeger said, looking down and meeting Fritz’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I- I’m not saying you wouldn’t!” Fritz stammered, frowning down at the clean countertop, drumming his fingers in a quick rhythm. “Just… Look, can I be honest with you?”

When hadn’t he been? In his time living in Oak Tree Town, Fritz had spent hours with Raeger, eating food carelessly and talking about his struggles getting his farm going, about preparations for contests and losses of fields. And he’d listened to Raeger, too, letting him vent about being overwhelmed by people sometimes, about how it felt like no one actually seemed to know him, even about being, maybe, possibly, very lonely in a town where almost everyone saw him as the clever, charming chef.

What Raeger said with a soft smile was, “Of course, you can always be honest with me.”

“Well.. I’m, I just, I want you know that I know a lot about tea, so that when I ask if I can have you over and make you tea sometime, you know it’s because I know what I’m doing and I want to do something nice for you. Because, you mean a lot to me, and… I want to do nice things for you. And I can get nice tea, since I know a lot about it!” He wasn’t looking up at Raeger, fiddling with a patch on his pants leg.

Raeger snorted gently, reached down and ran a hand through Fritz’s hair, cupping his cheek to tilt his face up to his. “I’ll bring the food, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a request from gloriousbreadbouquets on Tumblr for some fluff between Raeger and Fritz!


	24. Smile: Georgia x Laney

Laney and her eccentric father moved to town when I was a child, five, maybe six. I remember her slightness, how small she seemed beside her huge, broad-shouldered father, how she moved like she was frightened of being stepped on. She was polite and softspoken and beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I was intimidated by her, me with my tangled hair, me with my knees scabbed up from falling while I ran, me who constantly smelled faintly of horses. I didn’t make much of an effort to introduce myself to her. I was a brash girl, loud and unthoughtful, and I said something to her when I first met her, some inconsiderate joke I’d heard from one of the grownups about yellow hair, and she didn’t try to talk to me any more, left me to my running around with horses and with Ash, the rough-and-tumble other farmer’s kid.

She was always more delicate, more polite, more prim than I was. Far kinder and smarter and lovelier, too, if you asked me.

We grew up in something of parallels, Laney and me. She learned to bake and smile when she wasn’t thinking about it, and I learned to take care of horses and spit back fire at anyone who tried to rain on my parade. I sort of grew up with a sense of mild embarrassment toward her – I’ve long since forgotten whatever rude joke it was I tried to tell her (I was always awkward, always put my foot in my mouth around beautiful people), but I remembered the way she’d frowned, looked away, put her hand on her cheek as if she’d been slapped and said, “Oh.” I felt a twinge of shame at myself around her, thinking every time we spoke that I’d say something accidentally hurtful again, and because I worried, I ended up being thoughtless more than not.

She seemed to forgive me half the time, better than she did when we were kids, but then, what did I say about learning to smile? She was always so bright and soft, like sunlight through a window, gentle and fragile but strong, present, clear. I think I fell in love with her when we were teenagers and I sat on the fence of my horse’s pen, watching her bring some tea out to someone sitting at a table outside. She’d let her hair down in a braid and it had started to come a little undone, leaving her with wisps around her face as she smiled, chatted briefly with the customer. She straightened up, tucked some of her hair behind her ears, and looked over in my direction. The polite smile hadn’t quite left her face, but it changed when she met my eyes, warmed, almost, turned shyer and brighter at once.

I asked her to walk with me the next day. I told her that as impolite and rough a woman as I was, as much as she could do better, I wanted to make up for the years of awkwardness, of acting like a fool because I was so nervous around her, so nervous that I’d ruin whatever impression she had of me.

She smiled, she held my hand, and unbelievably, amazingly, she pressed a kiss to my cheek, brushed her lips to mine. She said, “I haven’t ever thought you were awkward, only flustered and honest and smiling. And I want to learn how to make you smile more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a drabble featuring Georgia and Laney from Tale of Two Towns!


	25. Year of Muffy: Gay

“What did you say, Rock?” Muffy was a beautiful woman and when she scowled it was a beautiful storm – Nami’s habitual protective layer of aloof chill was nonetheless unnerved by the look on Muffy’s face. “Repeat what you just said.”

The innkeepers’ son looked alarmed as Nami imagined she would feel if she were the one in Muffy’s direct line of sight. “Um…” He looked to the farmer, drinking with Marlin the farmhand in the corner, and to Griffin, polishing a glass being the bar. No one seemed to want to meet his eye, keeping their heads down. “I mean, I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“Oh, didn’t you?” Muffy hissed, marching from around the bar up to Rock. He tried to stand up and scramble away, but she was too quick, finger stabbing up to poke him in the chest. “Didn’t you mean it in a bad way? When you used it to mean something was bad? But you didn’t mean it in a bad way?”

“I’m sorry!” Rock yelped, backing up, slopping his beer over his mug. “I didn’t mean it, I really didn’t, it was just a habit!”

“Well break it,” Muffy snarled, grabbing the pint from his hand and pulling it away. “So. Go on home, Rock, I don’t want to serve you for the rest of the night and I don’t think Griffin will, either.” She looked over to Griffin. “Will ya, Griffin?”

He didn’t look up from the glass he was polishing. “I will not,” he responded gruffly. “Don’t abide by people making Muffy mad.”

“He does not,” Muffy concluded, smiling a double-edged smile. “Now. Rock. Why don’t you go on home and think long and hard about why using the word ‘gay’ as an insult is a very cruel, very mean thing to do that will not be tolerated in this bar, all right?”

“All right, Muffy,” Rock said meekly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I really am sorry.”

Nami watched this, took a sip of her whiskey. She wasn’t a huge fan of Rock’s; he didn’t mean harm, usually, but that didn’t mean he didn’t do it, and he didn’t tend to change what he was doing unless made to. As, she supposed, Muffy was making him change his behavior tonight, one way or another. He slunk out of the bar, leaving silence behind him. Muffy tossed her hair over her shoulder and marched back behind the bar, picking up the half-made daiquiri she’d been making before Rock made his comment to Nami.

“I’m sorry about that, Nami,” Muffy said, putting more ice into her drink. “I’d think he’d know better than to be so childish. I have no idea what’s in his head sometimes.”

Nami shrugged, looking down into her whiskey. “I mean, I suppose he’s not wrong. I am gay.” She looked up through her red bangs at Muffy, who smiled and finished her daiquiri, leaning over the bar to clink her glass against Nami’s.

“Well, he’s wrong to make it sound like anything bad at all,” Muffy said, and leaned further over to press a kiss to Nami’s lips. “Now, my love, let’s get our date officially going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2016 was decreed the Year of Muffy within the Harvest Moon fandom, and I took one-word prompts for fics about the star of the year! The prompt for this drabble was the word 'gay.'


	26. Year of Muffy: Wife

When she was a little girl, her mother read her fairy tales. Most people, she imagined, heard the same stories she did growing up, about knights and spells and castles, but for her, what appealed to her the most in those stories were the heroines. Not only the princesses, although they were wonderful, too, but generally, just those nameless fairy tale girls and women who defeated the trolls, kept kind in the face of cruelty, won their love at the end. Her favorite was about about the tiny girl, no bigger than your thumb, who had adventures all over her huge, tiny world until she was tired of it all and decided to marry a (literal) fairy prince.

Funny how few of those there were in the grownup world. Not only were there no fairy princes, but she found it harder and harder the more she grew up to act like the heroine of her own story. It seemed like most of the days melted one into the other, swimming from one important time to another. Swept as if on a much duller version of the backs of the four winds from one job to the next, one lousy lover who claimed to love her to the next one to whisper nothing into her ears.

Harder and harder to believe in love, harder and harder to believe in being the bigger person.

It’s been a year or few in this new little town, charmingly named Forget-me-Not Valley. She likes it here, she likes the gruff, quiet barkeeper and she likes the people who come to the bar. No more love for me here, she tells herself, no more trying to be the heroine when at best, she might be the older sister figure, the one who tries it first and fails so that the youngest sister can get it right on her turn. Fine, fine, she could be that person, she didn’t need to be the center of the stage. She could be the side character, she didn’t need to be the heroine anymore.

The farmer, she’s started being friends with her. She happened to be there on one of Muffy’s bad days, when her anxiety and sadness overwhelmed her, and the farmer let Muffy explain why she was upset (another man, another broken heart, more and more and more) without judgment, without trying to tell her what she really needed to do, without looking at her as less. It was a relief, not being treated as if she was either crazy or made of glass, and she started visiting the farmer more at her farm. Then the farmer was visiting Muffy at the bar, and soon they were sharing everything together, talking about love and loss and the little tragic childhood events that had made them who they were.

She was the farmer’s maid of honor when the farmer got married, to the grumpy farmhand with the wild black hair. He was all right, Muffy guessed, though she never interacted much with him – he was the type of man she might have liked as a child, brooding and serious, but it seemed that Muffy’s best friend really did bring out something softer and sweeter in him, sometimes, like the fairy tales always said a woman could make of a beast. And sometimes he still came to the bar and passed out and Griffin had to bring him home to his wife, Marlin muttering, “Celia, Celia,” the whole way home. But just because the farmer’s kiss had turned him into a prince didn’t mean there wasn’t still a little monster in him, did it?

Muffy and the farmer still talked all the time. The farmer’s son, a quiet, timid boy, called her Auntie, and Muffy spoiled him with presents and kisses and babysat him on the nights when the farmer and her husband needed time alone. Muffy would sometimes hold the farmer’s son, when he was a baby, and coo over him, imagine that she’d been the one to get married, the one to have the tamed beast for a husband, that she was the wife with a child to love and raise on fairy tales.

Maybe one day. Maybe one day. Not today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2016 was decreed the Year of Muffy within the Harvest Moon fandom, and I took one-word prompts for fics about the star of the year! The prompt for this drabble was the word 'wife.'


	27. Close: Wizard x Witch Princess

He wasn’t that handsome. She told herself that a lot. They’d known each other for years, that was surely part of it – years would make almost anyone immortal more handsome, more appealing. He was quiet and unreadable, he made an effort to keep his feelings from his face to unsettle anyone trying to know him better. Years and years ago, she might have had some affection for him as an immature girl, but she knew better now. She knew he wasn’t as mysterious as he pretended, and she knew from years of trying, decades of nudging, that he was set in his ways. He wouldn’t change, and she was not one for ice. She needed fire, and her own internal flame melted whatever silly crush she might once have had on him long ago.

He needed help with a spell today. In a few years, he’d use the base of this spell to help change her from a toad back to herself – years from now, there would be some farmer who’d be seeking to revive the dying goddess tree. In a few years, she’d be flustered but glad to find that while none of her efforts were of much help, the farmer would be able to do what she couldn’t and save the Harvest Goddess, save the island, save nature.

But today, the Wizard appeared on her doorstep and rapped his knuckles on her doorframe. It was summer, it was hot, even though it was nearly dawn and the sun hadn’t risen yet, and he had taken off his heavy coat, left it at home. Still too hot, still she had all her windows flung open and her hat off, wearing a black shift of cooler material than her typical outfit.

“What do you want?” she asked him, not turning around from her work, not acting as though she was surprised to see him, as though she wanted to. He was the only one who visited her out here, the only one who came this far into the forest. It was not a hard path, it wasn’t hard to find her, and yet he was the only one who ever tried. Less now than he used to – but then, it had been years since she made any effort to visit him. She used to go into town to see him, back when they first came to this place all those decades ago, she used to be the one who made the effort to see him. But not in a long time. Not now. Now, it was the first time she’d seen him in years again, the first time one of them had made an effort.

“No hello?” he murmured. His voice was raspier than it used to be, almost hoarse. How long had it been since he’d spoken to anyone? She knew he didn’t really like the villagers, didn’t like socializing; sometimes he’d play himself as a fortuneteller in town, if only to earn enough coins to buy more bags of coffee and new telescopes. He always had his head in the night. “It’s been…a long time.”

“No hello,” she said, putting the lid on her cauldron and turning to face him with her arms crossed over her chest. “What are you doing here? I’m busy.”

He came uninvited into her home (had she ever truly, formally revoked his access? Did she really have the heart to do that?) and walked over to her, looking at the cauldron with mild curiosity. “I just need…to borrow some ingredients.”

“Does this look like a market?” she snapped back. “I’m tired. Unlike some people, I don’t function on only three hours of sleep and ten gallons of coffee and I’ve only got a few more minutes of dawnlight to finish my spell. Then I’m going straight to bed.” All right, a small lie – she had all but finished the spell, and now the potion needed only to rest for a month in the pot, culturing and changing into what it was meant to be. But she had been up all night, and she was tired – she wanted to sleep, and him being here meant that all her little anxieties would be back, nibbling at her earlobe and keeping her awake with possibilities for at least an hour after he left. She hated acknowledging that he could still affect her this way.

“I’ll be…quick, then,” the Wizard murmured. “If you’ll…still let me. I really do…need it. Or I would not…have bothered you.” He wasn’t looking directly at her – he looked so tired. Long ago, she would have wanted to fold him into her arms, take away that weariness until he was brighter and shining. But he never was, no matter how anyone cared for him. She definitely didn’t still have that instinct, not now, not still.

He wasn’t trying to annoy her. She knew that, too. Knew there wasn’t much, if any, malice in him. He was like a sleepy old dog, rolling over for anyone who pushed, wanting more to be left alone than anything else. He didn’t plan anything, not the way she did – he took a passive, uncaring role in his own life. So he must actually need whatever it was that he was here to bug her about, if he’d made the trek all the way out of town to her little spot in the trees.

“Fine,” she sighed, leaning back against the wall, gesturing lazily to her messy table of spell components. “What is it you need?”

He strode with his long-legged step to her; he moved more gracefully than someone as lanky as he should, she’d always thought that. He wasn’t handsome, wasn’t handsome, and she stiffened back against the wall as he leaned over to reach down for a little bundle of dried foxgloves. One arm went above her shoulder to the wall and as he straightened up, she realized how close he was to her, how he leaned down and his face was only a few inches from hers. The foxgloves tucked into his pocket, his other hand went to her shoulder and she could feel herself loosening, dropping her guard, her cheeks bright red with the proximity of him. He smelled like coffee beans and parchment, like the dewy grass of the forest.

“Only this,” he murmured, looking into her eyes, and for a moment she was sure he would finally take action, finally show her that she wasn’t the only one feeling this sense of breathlessness, that she wasn’t the only one standing at the top of a hill and dying to fall down, down, down.

He pulled back, looked at the ground. “Thank you,” he said, rough, hoarse. He turned and loped back out into the dawn, leaving her as he always did, her breath caught in her throat, her hands quivering because Goddess he was always so close, always so close, and always so far, far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was based on a beautiful fan art by opiax over on Tumblr, and it features the Wizard and Witch Princess from Animal Parade!


	28. Year of Muffy: Horse

Early on in his first summer in the valley, the new farmer got a horse to help him travel faster around the valley. It was a pretty yellow creature, and despite its height, towering over her, Muffy wasn’t much scared of it. She liked to feed it sugarcubes, stroke its mane while talking to the farmer, chatting about whatever was going on in the Valley. He was a quiet man, the new farmer – she wasn’t ever quite sure if she was talking over him, keeping him from saying what he wanted to say, or if he really was as quiet as he seemed, as good a listener. But she’d sit on the fence that held his livestock and chatter to him while he milked his cows, talk about what she knew and did you hear that Lumina had pushed Rock into the Turtle Pond after he made a joke at her expense, and did you hear the fight that Samantha and Grant had the other night, poor Kate, when you could hear the fight all the way at the bar.

The farmer listened to her kindly, smiled at her with a gentleness that made Muffy feel like she could tell him whatever, that she could tell him anything and he’d listen to her. She’d loved before, but never so softly, so quickly. It had only been a few seasons and she wondered if he’d want to marry her, if he really meant it when he smiled at her and said that she wasn’t being silly, that he wanted to hear what she had to say. Girlish, but she had daydreams, on her walk back to the bar, of the farmer coming to meet her, sweeping her up on his horse and carrying her off into the sunset.

She heard another rumor. Celia, the beautiful girl who already knew the land, had fallen in love with the farmer, too. She heard a rumor that Marlin was beside himself, that there was a broken engagement. She heard that Celia was going to run away, was going to try to propose to the farmer before the end of winter.

Muffy was never spectacular at dealing with pressure. She didn’t know anything about farming, she didn’t know anything about having the sort of soft, casual grace and honesty that Celia had. Her heart pounded in her chest and she found herself in the farmer’s barn, anxiously combing the horse’s mane. It was the one thing she knew how to do around here, it was the one way she could be helpful, and if it was as close as she could be to being a farmer’s wife, then she’d do it, at least for now. The horse was used to her and chuffed at her kindly, nuzzled her hair as she brushed him. Muffy could hear voices outside, tried to decide what she’d tell the farmer when he found her. She just wanted to be helpful, she just wanted him to want her. Was it so much, to brush his horse and hope that he would love her?

The voices quieted. Someone came closer to the barn, one pair of heavy boots, and Muffy did her best to compose her face, to look as though she couldn’t be bothered by whatever was going on out there. That no matter who he loved, she would be intact, she would be all right. She looked only at the horse. “Girl troubles?” she said lightly, brushing the horse’s mane. It nickered and rubbed its cheek against her arm. “I heard voices. I hope you don’t mind that I’m here, brushing him. I was thinking about him and thought it’d be nice. I can go, if you want.”

She turned and there stood her farmer, the farmer, he wasn’t hers, he wasn’t hers, but he stood so close. “I don’t mind,” he said, quiet as he ever was, smiling. “And I wouldn’t really call them girl troubles.”

“What would you call them, then?” Muffy asked lightly, trying so hard not to care.

“I guess a misunderstanding.” He shrugged, looked down. “I think I might have led… Well, you’ll hear about it anyway. I think I might not have made it clear how I felt, and it confused people.”

Heart beating harder. “Oh? And how do you feel, then?”

The horse nickered and Muffy would swear from years to come that the horse nudged her forward, urging her into her farmer’s arms. He would say that he had simply wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled them close. But either way, they could both agree that they kissed, that he told her how he felt and she told him what she’d been thinking for months.

They rode on horseback to bring her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an anon prompt from my "Year of Muffy" challenge, where people could send me one word and I would write a Muffy-centric response. The word here was "horse."


	29. Lessons: Ramsey

Like most mornings these days, Ramsey woke up with aching joints, a bit of a headache, and the voice of a nine-year-old saying, “Wake up, wake up, wake up!” His daughter’s daughter, Chloe was a creature of the morning, and most of the time since she’d been staying with him, he’d tell her to get outside and bug someone else, at least until he’d had his coffee. How was it that it had been a whole year (a year today, in fact) and he still wasn’t used to the kid? Yet still, every day, she’d wake him up and he’d be as grumpy as he was the day before, and the week before that, and the month before that.

She didn’t seem to take it too personal, at least. And he did his best to dull the sharpness of himself, to make himself less rough. He’d been a poor father, he thought – his daughter and son had grown up rough and tumble and they never called him, never told him what was going on. He had only to see the way Chloe talked to him, hear her rattle on about her feelings and experiences, to realize how closed-off his own kids had been with him. Chloe looked just like her mother, had her clever way of looking at the world, and yet Sam had never talked to him the way Chloe did, or as much. Maybe when Sam was younger she had. Ramsey couldn’t (or didn’t want to) remember exactly these days.

Maybe he was getting a little more used to Chloe. Today, a warm morning in late spring, he sat up in bed before shooing Chloe out of the house. She grinned at him from the doorway, rocking back and forth with excess energy. “Good morning!” she repeated again brightly. “You’re actually up this time! Want to come and watch the sunrise with me?”

She’d asked him that more than once. Mostly he’d said no. Once he’d tried, for her sake, shortly after she’d come to live with him, shortly after Sam had passed. But he’d been too prickly and he could tell that he’d ended up making things worse, making her feel worse, and he’d left her to her grief and her morning. Hadn’t tried again. Since then he’d gotten a little better at treating her more gently, letting her be when she needed to be left alone and letting her chatter at him when she wanted that, too. Still wasn’t much good at it, but he was getting better.

So this morning he said, “All right, all right. Give me a minute to get up and get moving, all right?”

Chloe squealed. “Oh, YAY! Thank you so much, Grandpa, I’m going to go outside and clean off the stoop so we can sit there together!” She whipped out of sight and he heard the front door slam from the front of the shop.

A firecracker, like her mother. “Gotta do better,” Ramsey muttered to himself, lurching out of bed with the cracks and pops of joints. “Gotta do better.”

He got the coffee going, then went outside. Chloe sat on the edge of their little porch, legs swinging because she was still too short to reach the ground completely, though at least now her toes were scraping in the dirt. She heard the door and turned to smile at him. “Come sit, come sit, Grandpa!” she said, patting the spot she’d left next to her. “It’s almost here!”

It was. Ramsey sat down beside Chloe, looking down into the valley, where the sky had already begun to lighten, tinging the roofs and streets below white and pink. Chloe was watching the sky, smiling even in the early morning, even when it was all he could do to keep from being grumpy and stomping back to bed.

Do better. Gotta do better.

“You come out here every morning?” Ramsey said, gruff, ungiving. At least he was making an effort. But he didn’t think it was good enough.

“Yup! It’s fun to watch the sun come up. A whole new day with new beginnings and new chances!” She sighed a little, reached out and held his hand. A simple gesture, but one that he still wasn’t sure how to react to. Goddess, she just wanted someone to take care of her. He was a rough old man, too old to help anyone, too old to do right by a bright little girl who woke up to see the sunrise and ran around her life like a firecracker. A little girl who did her best to keep upbeat even when only a year ago her parents had died and left her with no one in the world but a grumpy old grandfather who barely knew how to feel his own feelings, much less help her with her own. She was teaching him all the time to do better, to listen better, to hear her, but he had so much to learn, still.

“New beginnings,” he muttered, nodding. “All right.” He squeezed her hand, smiled down at her, though she was watching the sunrise. “All right. Do you think you can give me a new beginning this year? I want…to start watching the sunrise with you every morning.”

Chloe grinned brightly. “Of course! I’ll help you learn how to wake up with the MOST energy, and then we can have breakfast together! Ooh, and there’s a snake around here somewhere, he likes the mornings, I’ll show you how to catch him and pet his little head! He likes me, but he didn’t at first, so you might have to get him to warm up to you, but we’ll go slow!” She chattered on, swinging her legs and holding his hand.

He could do better by her. He could learn to listen better, and he could learn to like waking up at dawn. It would be worth it.

Probably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written in response to an anonymous request for a family fic featuring Ramsey and Chloe from Animal Parade and Tree of Tranquility!


	30. The New Pirates of Castanet: The Kids of AP

“Do you think Chloe will realize?” Dakota asked, a little worried. Roy laughed and shook his head.

“She won’t know anything,” Roy assured her. “I mean, who knows what a real pirate map is supposed to look like? I sure don’t, and the mayor doesn’t, so I don’t think Chloe will be able to tell, either.”

“I asked my dad, and he said that really no one knows anything about what real pirate maps look like,” Heath added, nodding solemnly. “So I don’t think Chloe will know it’s fake.”

Chloe was five years older than the rest of them, and she was the one in charge of approving (or, frightfully, DISapproving) new members for the New Pirates of Castanet Club. She had promised the three of them, Dakota, Roy, and Heath, that if only they could come up with a real pirate map that led to real pirate treasure, they’d be allowed to join the club! And go on real adventures, with her and Paolo and even Bo, sometimes, when he wasn’t too busy at the carpenter’s. So the three of them had come up with a little plot. Heath had nicked some of his mother’s ores from the shop, and Roy and Dakota had been working on drawing up a map to lead them to the ‘treasure,’ which, really, the ore MIGHT refine down to silver, wasn’t that good treasure? The kind that, all right, might not be treasure, but definitely could be? The only thing was, they had to make the map look real enough that Chloe wouldn’t think it was a fake – they also needed to make it look hard enough that a reasonable adult pirate from a thousand years ago or whatever might have used it to hide their treasure somewhere on the island, while ALSO not being so difficult to unravel that Chloe wouldn’t be able to figure it out.

Definitely a challenge.

It was a good thing Roy had consulted with Dakota and Heath, though. His original plan had been to try to hide the treasure in the chimneys on the roofs of some of the houses in the Garmon mine district, but Dakota had helpfully pointed out that those houses wouldn’t have been there a thousand thousand years ago, when the pirates would have been hiding the treasure, so that fixed that, didn’t it? She had been put in charge of figuring out where, then they’d hide the treasure, and now that Roy’s map had led all around the island and nearly finished up, it was time to get out to the final burying place of their treasure before giving the map to Chloe to follow.

They’d been wandering in the forest for a while when Dakota said again, “Do you think it’ll be too hard for Chloe to get to where we are in the forest?” All the trees looked the same to her, and it seemed even as if the path they were walking kept changing. Every now and then they’d reach a clearing, a meadow – once they found a good one (Heath had heard from the carpenter’s son that there was even a swamp somewhere in the forest!) Roy would draw a few distinguishing marks on the map and then they’d turn around and go home. They’d had to dig a little kid-sized hole beside the forest gate to get in, but it would be worth it when they were in the New Pirates of Castanet club. Chloe would have to let them in with such a good map, wouldn’t she? Except, apparently none of the meadows they’d passed were good enough to stop in and bury the treasure before they left, and Dakota was beginning to get a little scared. Of course she didn’t want to say so to Roy or Heath, so what she said instead was, “Do you think Chloe’s going to be able to find it out here? I mean, if we’re with her, I guess we can try to make her think going the right way is her idea, but…”

Heath swallowed and said nothing, but he looked nervous, too. Roy seemed less so, leading the way without looking back. “Look! A pond!” Roy called, jumping ahead through the underbrush. And yes, there was a reedy little pond…and a lot more water, too.

“I think this is the swamp that Luke was telling us about,” Dakota said, looking around. Reeds, cattails, all that stuff – and something through the mist ahead, too, that gave her a strange feeling. “Let’s hide the treasure here and get home, okay?”

Heath nodded in agreement – they found a heavy rock and between the three of them, pushed it out of the way enough to dig into the soft ground under it, making enough of a hole to put the lump of silver ore in. Dakota kept eyeing the dark space on the other side of the water, something about it gave her a bad feeling. Was that a bridge, through the mud? Luke hadn’t mentioned anything about that.

After they got the ore buried under the rock and the rock moved back into position, Roy sat down to draw a quick sketch of the rock on the map. “Last touch, and then we’ll head home, you babies,” he muttered under his breath. Dakota and Heath exchanged a look. How could the wind in the reeds and trees, the creaking of something that sounded like boards somewhere behind them, not freak him out, too? But they were going to be New Pirates of Castanet, and pirates weren’t scared of things like shadows in swamps or creaking sounds or…footfalls…

Dakota turned around just in time to see a cloaked figure step out of the mist toward them. How had it gotten so misty all of a sudden that someone could creep up on them like that? Heath yelped and jumped back – Roy jerked his hand in surprise and drew a long line across the entire map.

“What,” intoned the figure in the cloak, “are you children doing out here?”

Dakota gulped – Roy and Heath fell in behind her, and she tried to square her little shoulders. Pirates aren’t scared, pirates aren’t scared. “Um,” she stammered, “we’re pirates, and we’re burying our treasure here.”

The figure laughed. “Oh? And what makes you think you can trespass on the territory of the Great Swamp Witch Princess of Castanet, little pirates? She’ll turn you into frogs if she can catch you. Best you go home, straight through the trees.”

Dakota nodded furiously and grabbed Roy and Heath’s hands. “We’re sorry!” They turned and ran for the borders of the trees, and before they vanished into the underbrush, Dakota yelled again, “We’ll be back later for the treasure but then we’ll be really gone forever!”

They ran right until they got to the fence, and after shimmying under the gate, ran to Dakota’s house nearby. Roy would need to redraw the map to make up for the line in the middle, and it would take them a few weeks of sunning the paper in the sunlight to make it look older, but they’d be back in the summer, following Chloe through the woods and trying to pretend that they didn’t know where they were going. And this time, the Witch Princess would have exchanged the lump of silver ore for real silver coins, and maybe all pirates were just a little scared of witches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another request from an anon for a more family-based fic -- I set this one around some of the kids from Animal Parade!


	31. Year of Muffy: Hair

“I think she copied my style on purpose,” Muffy sniffed, tapping her nails on the bar in a quick rhythm. Griffin raised an eyebrow at her. “Flora, you know, the archaeologist’s assistant.”

“Your style?” Griffin couldn’t recall Flora looking much like Muffy at all – did Muffy mean her way of walking? Sometimes she meant things like that.

“My hairstyle, Griff,” Muffy sighed, picking up a wet rag to scrub at a nonexistent spot on the wood. “I think she’s trying to look like me.”

“She wears a ‘tail, I thought.”

“Oh, sure, but look.” Muffy laid the rag down and gathered her thick blonde hair in a ponytail at the base of her neck. “Now, imagine my hair’s less bright and more brown-blonde, and doesn’t it look like Flora’s hair?” She huffed at Griffin, wisps of hair falling down around her face. “I’m not wrong, I don’t think.” She leaned back to peer at herself in the mirror hung behind the bar. “It looks really similar, doesn’t it?”

Griffin shrugged. “I ‘spose.” It probably wouldn’t help to mention that Flora had been wearing her hair that way the very day she moved into the valley. Before she’d even met Muffy. Probably wouldn’t be helpful to note that Flora wasn’t exactly the type of woman to change her hair up that much, even to try to imitate someone as pretty as Muffy.

Bit much, to put on her. He definitely didn’t need to mention it now. Besides, he liked her talking to him, liked her to tell him things that were on her mind. He didn’t want to make her feel like she couldn’t, like he was just looking to criticize. What did it matter, in the long run? He’d known Muffy long enough to know that she wasn’t going to treat Flora any differently, and honestly, eventually, she’d probably drop the whole thing entirely as if she’d never had the thought. All it would take would be for Muffy to grow to like the archaeologist’s assistant, and from there Muffy would forget she’d ever cared about Flora’s hair at all.

“Right. And it just doesn’t seem very nice to me, stealing my hair without even asking for permission, or tips or anything. I mean, it’s just so similar, you’d think she wouldn’t know how to take care of it.” She sighed, picking up the rag again to keep scrubbing at the bar. At least it was in a new place this time – he was a little worried she was going to take the varnish up off the wood. “Remember when Celia was fiddling with dying her hair? She came and talked to me, asked me what I thought, if I’d mind helping her, how I took care of my hair. And sure, she decided not to do it, and it didn’t really have anything to do with me, but still, it was nice to feel like she knew I had some expertise on the matter.” She scowled at the rag, tossed it into the soapy bucket behind the counter. “I’m being silly, I know I am. But my hair is important to me, Griffin!”

“I understand,” he said with a bob of his head. And yeah, the next time Flora came into the bar, Muffy would be a bit frosty to her until Flora complimented her hairstyle, and after that, just as Griffin thought, Muffy would warm up to her. He’d seen it happen over again, more than a few times, Muffy changing her mind about this theory or that suspicion – he was more than happy to be her sounding board, the person she told all of her thoughts until she was ready to figure out her reality. And besides, he’d get upset over little things, like Gustafa bringing his little guitar into the bar on a night that Griffin had been thinking about playing – who was he to think it was silly to get upset about hair?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another "Year of Muffy" one-word prompt, this one 'hair' from an anon!


	32. Loss: MC x Mistel

You learned the language of loss very young. Parents gone early, but even before that they traded in antiques. You used to ride with them to estate sales. Your sister would find a quiet nook to scribble in, but you would wander the houses, running your fingertips over the furniture and bookshelves, wondering how long it would take for the dust to settle over everything.

The death of your parents, when your sister was barely eighteen and you were just old enough to have perfect memory of them, that only cemented your knowledge of loss and lack. Your sister kept up her scribbling and left the shop for you to run. You’d observed your parents working enough and had a head for numbers – besides, she was better at her writing than she ever would have been at your parents’ work. Before the inheritance money could run out, she was selling her books and you’d figured out how to run the shop and you wanted for nothing.

Nothing that you weren’t missing anyway, at least.

It’s like walking around with a gaping hole in your chest. Cliche, but true. And sometimes it can even feel nice, like feeling the wind run over the edges and knowing it can’t really touch you, nothing can touch you. Look, you can stick your fingers in the emptiness, wiggle them around and you don’t feel anything. You feel nothing.

But him, the farmer, he feels everything. At least it seems that way. You don’t know how he does it, the first time you meet him, overflowing with smiles and words. He cries when one of his chickens dies of old age, he whoops out with joy when he dives into the local rivers. You were so worried at your parents’ funeral about looking like a little baby, you didn’t want anyone to see you cry when they lowered your parents into the cold ground, so you buried yourself with them, you buried your tears and your smiles and your heart in the ground when they died.

He’s something that grew out of the ground, though. A sunflower, a sunbeam, sunshine everywhere. He’s overflowing with life and for some reason you can’t understand, not at first, he wants to be around you. He’s intoxicating, he’s beautiful, he’s warm and caring. He comes to see you every day, brings you flowers and food and butterflies he caught carefully between his hands because their delicate beauty reminded him of you. How could anything alive remind him of you?

You tell him you love him. Beauty of beauties, he loves you too, but sometimes when you fall asleep in his arms, you dream of swelling rivers, of his lungs filling and gasping and sinking and you wake up sobbing into his chest, trembling and shaking with the fear of his loss.

He kisses your hair. He keeps you and lets you keep him, too. And you never do lose him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a response to an anon request over on Tumblr!


	33. Cravings: Chase x Maya

Maya sat down at the kitchen table and dropped her head on her arms. “I don’t know what this baby wants, but I’m hungry and nothing sounds good.” She thumped her head on her arms a few times and groaned.

Chase sat up in his seat, stopped playing ditties on his flute, and looked to her with a crooked smile. “Aw, I’m sorry, sugar. Want me to try to make you something?”

“Nothing sounds good,” Maya grumbled, but shifted to peer at him over her arms. “But um, what could you make?”

Chase chuckled and stood, leaned down to kiss her forehead. The baby was due in less than two weeks, but Maya’s cravings had been terrible practically since they’d conceived. Her cravings had actually been what sent them to the doctor to check at first, long before she had any morning sickness or showing in the belly. No, none of that. It was the cravings for pickles and strawberry ice cream, hot milk with a teaspoon of salt, scrambled eggs with onions and chocolate sauce.

Chase went to the fridge and peered in. “Hmm… Are you feeling salty, sweet, sour, bitter, or umami?”

“U-whaty?”

“Um, it’s basically, it’s a word for savory, kind of. Soy sauce and tomatoes have umami components.”

Maya giggled. “So when our baby is born, you’ll be u-daddy and I’ll be u-mommy.”

Chase laughed. “Hey, if we can get the kid to say it, I’ll answer to it.” He pulled out some fresh tomatoes and a carton of eggs, a block of fresh cheese. He held them up for her to see and she made a face.

“Ew, no eggs, I’ll puke.” She leaned back in her chair and Chase ducked back into the fridge, returning the eggs but setting the rest on the counter. A loaf of bread got licked lips, and onions got exaggerated gagging. But garlic and butter got a yay, and so did some bars of chocolate and candied apple slices. That was enough to go on, so Chase got started, after laying out the pickle chips, cherries, and sugar cubes for her to munch on. She chose the pickles, crunching loudly while he prepared the approved ingredients.

“You ever wonder why you…”

Chase paused, looked over at Maya. She had mumbled the last of her words. “What’s that?” he asked. She had put her head back on the table, one hand dropped down to stroke her huge belly. He could see from here that the baby was moving, see it curling and shifting under her dress. She traced her thumbs over its movement. Maya swore she could feel when their baby was dreaming, when it was happy or angry, just by the way it rolled over. He finished up his prep and put his concoction in the oven, then moved to kneel beside her seat. Her bottom lip was wobbling, and he stroked her back.

“Do you ever wonder why you put up with me?” she whispered at last, leaning her head on his shoulder with a sniffle. “I’ve been putting you through so much, especially with all this craving stuff. I know how much you hate having to throw out a meal, and how many times have I quit eating in the middle with this baby? And I’ve been grumpy and picky and…” She sighed.

Chase hugged her to him and kissed her forehead. “My darling, you are not a chore I have to put up with. And it’s not as if you’ve suddenly decided to be picky – you’re carrying our child!” He grinned. “Besides, it’s been a fun creative challenge, figuring out things you’ll eat. This is more fun than making the same spaghetti and clams for Luke at the bar every night for all time.”

She giggled and he nuzzled the tip of his nose against hers, then dipped to kiss her belly. The baby had calmed. “And hey,” he said, “maybe with all these different foods, the baby won’t be a picky eater.”

She sighed and stroked her hand through his hair. “Thank you,” she murmured, and before he could tell her that no thanks were needed, she stood up and announced that for the thousandth time today, she needed to pee. By the time she came back, Chase had laid her Variety Special Pizza on the table, along with a selection of toppings (from the candied apples to anchovies – she chose both) for her to put on it. And she ate it all, told Chase it exactly hit the spot, and he kissed her and told her that she was all he ever craved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anon request for Maya having pregnancy cravings!


	34. Year of Muffy: City

Muffy could remember precisely the last time a man broke her heart. It had been late spring, her hair frizzy around her shoulders with the coming humidity of summer. She had gone from brunch with her more critical friends to a date with Mike – the brunch had dwelled partially on one of her friends having gotten engaged to an ex of Muffy’s, and she was feeling beaten down.

She was nearing thirty, her friends kept teasing her. Most of them had kids now, she was the last of them who wasn’t wearing any ring on her finger at all. Did she think Mike was going to change that soon? He made all kinds of money at that job of his, why didn’t he ever seem to spend any of that on her?

She’d lived in this city her whole life, met these women when they and she were children. They weren’t the sort of connections she could ignore or easily abandon. But sometimes she wondered what would really happen, how she would really feel, if they were to abandon her.

At least she liked Mike, this year. Her job was stressful and underpaid, and her friends could make her feel like she’d been through a riptide, but Mike was handsome and he bought her flowers sometimes, and she could picture marrying him and settling down and raising kids with him. Since she was a little girl, she had wanted to be in love, to be loved, and couldn’t she just be in love with Mike?

They’d been dating for six months months or so, and she thought he was liking her more and more every day. She’d dated enough to know when men weren’t taking her seriously, and at first Mike hadn’t. But she was getting older and her friends joking about her age kept her from leaving him, and besides, he wasn’t mean to her. He didn’t always think of her, but he wasn’t mean to her. She’d put up with much worse before. And this had been her longest relationship since Jake, back right after high school.

She was only five minutes late when she arrived but he was checking his watch in an exaggerated way. “Sorry, Mike,” she said, bending to kiss him on the cheek before sitting down. “Dividing the check evenly took longer than it should have, some of the girls had a few mimosas too many, you know how they get.”

“Mm.” The waitress came up to the table, smiling to take Muffy’s drink order. While Mike gave it and ordered for both of them, Muffy noticed with no small pang of jealousy that even the waitress had a little diamond glittering from her ring finger. Not that she didn’t have respect for waitresses – her parents both had been servers their whole lives. Only, the waitress was younger than Muffy, and was Muffy the only woman her age who hadn’t been married or even proposed to yet? 

The waitress took their orders and vanished, and Mike said, “Thanks for joining me today, Muffy.”

She smiled at him, but there was something in his tone that made her smile a little uneasy. “Hon, I like having lunch with you. You hardly have to thank me for it.” The city around them seemed buzzing, seemed louder, and she found herself focusing on his lips, watching for glimpses of his teeth. She felt faint and the waitress came with a glass of iced tea. Muffy took a long drag of it like some would a cigarette. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“Well.” 

Not what she wanted to hear. He had leaned back in his chair and turned a little to watch the people walking by, chatting, jogging, going about their lives. He had such a beautiful profile, nose straight and noble. She thought of kings when she saw his nose in profile. She felt so small when she saw him in profile.

“I’m doing fine, Muffy,” Mike said at last, not looking at her. “Only, I wanted to ask you, what do you want from our relationship? Where do you see us going?”

This was the first time in a long time she was the one who was asked the question, not the one asking. She looked down at her hands, twisting her napkin, ripping at the edges. “Oh… Well, I mean, we’ve been together for a while now. And I know it started as only sex, but I feel like we’ve gotten closer than that, and, well, I want… I’d like more. I guess, sometime down the line, I can see us getting…getting a place together, or… Well, to be honest, I want to marry you and I see us having children. I’ve always wanted to be a mother and a wife, and I think I could be a good mother, a good wife to you…”

She looked up and he was looking at her like it was from an immense distance, like she was an ocean away. Even before he started speaking her heart began to tremble, like she was going to break apart.

“Do you think you would be? I’m not so sure.” He coughed – the waitress had brought them the appetizer he’d ordered. “I don’t mean to be mean. Only, do you think you’re really meant for that? I just can’t see you as a mother or a wife.”

Her heartbeat was in her ears and Muffy stared at her lap, barely hearing the rest of the speech. She’d heard it a thousand times before, anyway – not her, it was him, he just didn’t want the same things she did, maybe they should see other people and see if they wanted to still be together, this didn’t mean that they needed to stop having sex, even, only he wanted some space, wanted to pull back and take a step away. If she looked away from her lap, from her anxious fingers twisting the napkin over and over again, tearing it to bits, she would burst into tears and he’d tell her not to make a scene.

They parted for the last time – he kissed her cheek, told her he wished her well. She waited until she was sure he would be totally gone to look up and see that he’d left her with the check. The waitress gave her a pitying look.

This damn city. She needed to get away, the drone of people and bicycles and cars, it was too much, she couldn’t hear herself think. She couldn’t face her friends again, she didn’t even want to go back to work.

She spent her savings on a ticket to a valley in the country, where they were hiring for a barmaid. She abandoned her life in the city and resigned herself to being the pretty old maid in a small town where no one knew who she was, no one knew where she’d been before she came.

Do you think you would be? Only, do you think you’re really meant for that?

Maybe she wasn’t. But she couldn’t stay in that city where she couldn’t breathe, where so many men had broken her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A one-word prompt response for the "Year of Muffy" challenge -- this prompt was "City."


	35. Girlfriends: Pony x Muffy x Celia x Nami

Pony hadn’t had a lot of girlfriends growing up. Not that she hadn’t wanted them – she’d been endlessly fascinated by the women and girls in her life. Only, she hadn’t been able to express that admiration well, she thought. She would trip over herself, her own tongue, say something inadvertently offensive. She did better when she was focused on a task, on doing something with her hands. Less awkward. And so she slid rather easily into her role as a farmer. It was a simpler adjustment than she could have predicted; it helped that the villagers welcomed her so warmly.

The woman who worked at the bar, Muffy, brought a care package when Pony first moved in, and they talked regularly, an instant friendship that quickly bloomed into a relationship, quick kisses as she left the bar, flowers given and kept. Muffy was so breezily affectionate, she exuded love and left it like a trail of perfume in her wake, and Pony was intoxicated by her. Muffy understood Pony in a way no one ever had before, and she talked about their relationship often with Celia, the nearby farmer who also became a fast friend of hers.

Celia was younger than Pony, and Pony found herself constantly protective of her. Celia spent a lot of time at Pony’s farm, with her and Muffy, talking, helping, watching the way Pony brushed her fingers along Muffy’s waist, the new smile on Muffy’s lips that Celia had never seen before. The three of them grew closer and closer as summer faded into winter and soon, almost on accident, they realized they loved each other, all three of them, and even as the weather got colder all around them was love, love, love. The warmth of the three of them spread around them, from Celia walking Muffy to the bar and kissing her cheek before she left to Pony and Celia harvesting crops together, laughing and talking and teasing.

Winter came and Pony’s friend Nami told her she was going to leave when the snow left, she was going to be gone when the flowers began to return. She was out of money, she couldn’t keep staying at the inn, and so Pony offered her home. Stay with us, she said. I’ll talk to Celia and Muffy, but I know they’ll say the same thing. Please, stay here.

And Nami did. She had never been one for love, not before, but in the farmer’s house, with fresh flowers on every table, with women who loved and kissed and made the very air warmer with their love, it was hard not to fall in love with them.

And Nami did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an anon request for a drabble about the poly love of all the ladies from A Wonderful Life!


	36. Goddess: Reina x Oracle

Reina was raised by the mountain, its wild lavender and its secrets, so of course she knew the shrine. It was closer to Bluebell than Konohana, so growing up she’d only visited it a handful of times, on her most adventurous expeditions. She remembered asking her father what he thought the little stone building was for.

“Probably a shrine to the Harvest Goddess,” her father had said. “Or else some local spirit those Bluebell folks believe in. A little goddess, I guess.”

So whenever she went by the shrine from then on, she left flowers for whatever little goddess lived there. As she grew older, she made it closer to Bluebell less and less, the rivalry between the two towns more intense, but she kept the romantic idea of a little goddess living in the shrine, accepting gifts from passersby in whatever forms they came. Something of a comfort to her – to imagine a sweet goddess who might be as thankful for flowers as Reina was. Sometimes when she felt lonely or caught herself near tears just before sleep, when she felt like she was falling from a mountain cliff and had to gather her footing before she died, she would say a prayer, quick, call out for the Goddess of Small Gifts. The only Goddess Reina prayed to, really, these days. She slipped more and more into research, gathering plants from the mountain only to bring them home and dissect, unwind, claw into with her need to learn.

One of her trips up the mountain took her closer to Bluebell again. She spotted the shrine and felt the rush of comfort, of familiarity, moving closer. She’d gathered a few small wild pink cat flowers, nothing huge, and she braided a strand of grass around them as she knelt before the shrine. “I don’t know if you’re still here,” she whispered, as if to the flowers. “But I hope you are. I hope you’re here.”

She laid the bundle of flowers on the doorstep and sat for a moment on the shrine’s stoop, watching the animals of the mountain as they moved, bugs and butterflies and living things everywhere to make her feel a little less dead.

The door behind her opened and Reina gasped, nearly falling back. A woman stood in the shadowed space, pink hair spilling in curls around her face. Reina stumbled to her feet. The woman was shorter than her, too, Reina could have wrapped the woman in a hug and nestled her chin in the woman’s hair. The image startled Reina with its tenderness, with how much she wanted it.

The woman gave a little bell-like laugh and picked up the bundle of flowers, holding it at a distance, examining the braid Reina had used to hold it together. “So you’re the one who has been bringing me presents,” she said, and her voice was like a petal, like a bloom in the sunshine. Reina could only gape. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.”

“And I’ve wanted to meet you,” Reina murmured breathlessly. “I’ve wanted to meet the goddess here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an anon request for a drabble featuring Reina and Oracle from Tale of Two Towns!


	37. Fortune: Muffy & Wizard

I picked at my fingernail, like I do when I’m nervous. “It’s not… I mean, I’m not saying any of this is real. Or that it’s not.” I didn’t know which was more offensive to say.

The man across from me had pulled up a chair and sat in front of his crystal ball. I suspected that he took a seat largely just to make me more comfortable, nervously picking at my fingernails and looking at his house like I was scared of getting bitten.

It was just a short stop, on my way back home to the valley. A little stop, just this small town by the sea where I could shop for a few clothes and sigh at the ocean for a while. On my way to the ferry, which would get me across the bay to the train back home, I asked the captain about the building with the telescope sticking up into the sky like a broken branch. The captain said that a fortuneteller lived there, or some kind of magician, something like that. I had only been curious.

The fortuneteller now said just, “Take…your time.” He had a rough, soft voice, like cotton, like he’d gone ages without talking and wasn’t used to it. His hair was a shimmering silver, despite the youth of his face, and he was tall, slim, long as a shadow. His eyes, though, they were most striking, one amber and one green, a white tattoo like a triangled mimicry of tears under the golden eye. If anything could convince me he was actually some kind of real fortuneteller, the pierce of his eyes was it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, fumbling now to fill the silence between us, hanging like a tangible thing over the glittering glass ball on the table. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“It might help…if you told me…where you’re going…after this,” the fortuneteller said.

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “I took a little vacation, for the winter, out to a tropical island. Just a few weeks, get my head cleared. I’m a barmaid, back home, Forget-Me-Not Valley, you know it? Well, my boss is really nice, and, I guess, I’ve just been having a hard time. I’m turning thirty this year, and, well!” I held up my undecorated left hand with a laugh that was too high pitched, even to my ear. “So I… I haven’t been myself, and I took a vacation. So, after this, I suppose I’m heading home…” My stomach wrenched at the thought of my little room, the tiny bed, just me. Goddess. “Um. I suppose that’s why I’m here.” I could feel my cheeks going red and pressed my hands to them, hoping to cool them down. “I feel so silly.”

“You aren’t,” the fortuneteller said. His expression was perfectly neutral, maybe even a little sympathetic. “I swear to you…I have heard…far sillier.” His mouth bent in such a soft smile I almost didn’t see it.

“I guess,” I said slowly, “I’d just like to know if… I mean, if there’s anything… Will I fall in love, this year? Will I ever get married? Can you tell me that, I want to be a mother, will I ever be a mother, men are so terrible to me, will anyone ever be kind?” The questions tumbled out once I start, like opening a dam.

He waited for me to finish, then pulled his purple hood over his head, dropping his hands over his crystal ball. The light coming through the windows seemed to flicker (trick of the light?) and the crystal glimmered all the brighter in the dimmer light. The fortuneteller murmured a few words under his breath and the light from the crystal shifted, like the sun behind clouds. My skin crawled and my breath caught in my throat, and whatever beliefs I held, I found myself staring at his face, at the crystal, like my life would depend on whatever happened next.

The moment ended quickly, the light all normal again, the man with his neutral expression tilting his head so that his hood slid back down.

Silence, and I bit my lip, fighting the urge to ask, Well??

The man at last smiled at me, real and bright this time. The effect on his face was like throwing a stone in a pond, shattering and shifting everything. He looked almost young, almost joyful. “You…will be…very happy,” he said, and I found myself mirroring his smile back to him. “You…are so very…worthy of love. It…will come…for you.”

“Really?” I gasped, standing – I felt like someone had come running toward me and handed me a baton and now I needed to get going. “Are you sure?”

He nodded and put away his smile, but it was too late, the feeling was there, and I exclaimed, “Oh, thank you, fortuneteller, thank you!” I paid him, then saw the time and gasped that I had to run or I would miss my ferry to the train. He merely nodded, no small talk, no further discussion of our conversation, but I ran to the ferry like I was being lifted on wind. I did not speak to the fortuneteller again.

I did send him an invitation to my wedding, though. Hopefully I’ll get to see him tomorrow and give him a hug for my fortune.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a little fic I did at the start of 2017 to help finish the Year of Muffy and kick off the Year of Wizard!


	38. Soft: Toby x Renee

“You’ll have…to give up…your voice.” The human wizard, eyes flashing and golden-green, are indifferent, calm. He doesn’t care, not really, what I choose, not from what I can see. Maybe humans have different expressions than merfolk. Maybe I just don’t understand.

“Are you…sure…that you…truly…want this?” He runs a hand over his crystal ball, shifting in the sand. “Once you choose…you cannot…go back.”

It’s nearly dawn, my mother and brothers will notice that I’m gone soon. They would drag me home, watch me constantly to make sure I didn’t do anything like this again.

But I have to do this.

“I want this,” I say, turning to look from the shore up to the town, the lights in the hills. “I’m sure.”

He begins to tell me what the cost will be – my silvery tail twice as long as my torso for feeble human legs, my voice and communication (”No…writing,” he says) for three days on shore, three days to try to win her or I’ll perish where I stand.

The consequences don’t matter. They just don’t. He speaks and I’m still thinking of her.

She comes to the beaches now and then, but I see her most on the bridge, just inland, where she sits on the edge and casts a line into the water. My brothers always teased me about that childhood game I still played, seeing how long I could take the swim inland, the choke of freshwater, before I had to turn tail and swim back to our breathable ocean. It had gotten harder in the past years, the very water losing its breath as the Goddess’s power faded, but still I swam upriver, if only to see how far I could make it, and that was when I saw her.

The first time, I saw her sitting up on the bridge in the windy spring air, her hair tossed by the breeze. I had seen humans before, from a distance, and I might have swum on upstream, except she wobbled, and with a sharp cry of panic she tilted into the water, falling with a splash. The water was deep there, a few rocks, and I raced forward; she thrashed and struggled, but her skirt had somehow gotten caught under the rocks and air bubbles flew up in a line from her mouth, I realized she was drowning. I had been too far when she fell, by the time I got close and tore her skirt out from the rocks, she was moving much less, her eyes fluttering. I dragged her up from the water to the shore, spreading her out in the sand. She coughed, eyes fluttering open, soft and brown and gentle, and for a moment we locked eyes.

My reason returned to me and I pulled myself back to the water, disappearing before I could make any more bad decisions. Still, behind me, I heard a soft voice call out, “Are you okay?” before I turned back to the sea.

For a week after that I would not swim upstream, but her face, her tears, her first instinct to help a person in the water even after her own danger kept returning to my mind. Eventually my curiosity overwhelmed and I swam back, seeing her up on the bridge, her fishing rod in hand. Someone else stood by her, with heavy blue braids and the look of someone always cold. I kept low under the water until I was under the bridge, out of their sight, and emerged. A twinge of guilt at eavesdropping, then a soft voice said, “I know, I know, Candace, I know I’m being…irrational. I just, I know I saw him. And he swam away and didn’t come back up.” The hook, pushed by the current, drifted closer to me, trailed by a few curious fish. “I can’t shake the feeling, the look of him. I don’t know. Whoever he was, I just, I hope I see him again.”

That had to be her, the girl with the soft brown eyes, the one I’d seen before. Her voice was as soft as her eyes, as she told her friend about her concern for the man in the river, as her friend spoke back in words too quiet to hear.

I shooed away the fish near her hook, and careful of its point I slid on a pink seashell, tucking the curved end firmly in the shell’s deep curve. I tugged the line and it twitched, the shell staying balanced on the end. Another twitch and it shot out of the water; I stayed long enough to hear a soft gasp, “Would you look at that?” before I swam home.

For weeks, I swam upriver and watched for her, listened for her. I didn’t know if it was seeing me in the river that once that made her speak to the water more, or if she was always this way, singing and speaking and laughing around the water. Sometimes she was there with friends, sometimes she was by the shore alone. But for weeks I went to see her, to listen.

And tonight, I made my decision. I had to meet her, I had to speak with her, I wanted to hear her and know that she was talking to me. Rumors, whispers led me to the wizard, the man who might have enough magic to put me on shore and give me legs. There would be a trade, of course there would be a price, but I want to pay it. I want to pay what I need to for her to know my name.

The wizard passes his hand again over the crystal, smoke and stars inside spinning into dark clouds that glitter with depths greater than the bounds of the ball. I groan, pain streaking through my tail, and I clutch helplessly at the sand. I think of my mother, my brothers, when they’ll notice I’m gone.

The pain grows into an agony and as I begin to scream my voice dies in my throat, and all I can do is writhe.

—-

Renee sat on the edge of the bridge, fishing rod in hand, watching the line where the river swept into the ocean. The air was beginning to bite with autumn, and soon the waters would be choppy with ice. Would the man in the water be okay in the cold, or would he retreat to warmer waters?

Silly of her. It was silly of her to act as if that man in the water lived there, or that he was anything but a stranger passing through town who happened to help her. But she couldn’t shake the color of his eyes, the bright, vibrant, soft green looking down at her. She’d been fuzzy, confused from the water, but she remembered his eyes, the second of looking into them and feeling…feeling something, for certain.

Maybe she shouldn’t sit on the edge of the bridge anymore. Maybe she should be more careful of the water.

It was early, but someone was walking down the bridge from the direction of town, stumbling, silvery blue hair glinting in the light. Renee didn’t recognize him, and she knew everyone in town. She thought. She lifted her hand over her eyes, squinting in the morning light, trying to make out who it was.

Whoever they were, they already seemed familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written in response to a prompt to make Toby from Animal Parade and Tree of Tranquility into a merman! Merlad?


	39. Dreams: Ann x Karen

Ann thunked her head on the bar. “I can’t flirt any harder than this,” she moaned. Claire patted her shoulder sympathetically. “I’ve given her free drinks on the house every night for a month, and I’ve talked about the Starry Festival and not having a date every time I’ve seen her, and…”

“Have you tried just asking her to join you, directly?” Claire asked, to which she got an exasperated sigh. 

“I can’t do that!” Ann protested. “I mean, what if she’s not interested? What if she’s already got a date? What… No, no, no, I can’t.”

“And what if she’s thinking the same thing?”

“Then I guess I’m out of luck.” Ann groaned and sat up enough to put her chin on her arm.

Claire tilted her head thoughtfully. “Are you above someone asking her out for you?” she asked.

“What? Yes!” Ann exclaimed, flushing. Did she really sound like that much of a child? “Ugh, look, I guess I’ll figure it out. On my own.” She pouted and stood up straight again.

Claire tilted her head thoughtfully. “Look, why don’t you come over to my place for the festival?”

Ann frowned as she got a cloth to wipe down the bar. Keeping her hands busy made her feel a little less like an idiot. “Aren’t you doing something with Gray, though?”

Claire grinned. “Yes, but come over anyway. I’ll be there at 7:30 for a bit, before going over to Gray’s. Maybe you can come with me? Your dad will be fine with Duke and Manna for the night, we can have a friends’ Starry Night.”

Ann sighed. “All right, fine. I could use a night with friends.” She chuckled. “I’ll even bring a bottle of wine.”

Claire’s grin grew. “That’s the spirit. So I’ll see you tomorrow at my house at six!” She paid her tab (and even left a hefty tip – was Ann really that pathetic or was Claire really that nice?) and left Ann with a sense of at least some optimism.

The next evening, Ann knocked on Claire’s door with her free hand. In the other, she’d packed a little basket (and by little, she meant she went overboard as she always did) with a couple of bottles of wine, some little rolls and cakes from the inn, and some grapes and cheese to go with them. If Claire was going to be nice enough to host her, then Ann could at least bring something. The sky overhead was cloudy, threatening rain, though Ann could count on one hand the number of times the Spring Thanksgiving festival had been rained out. Ann pressed close to the house, trying to avoid a few early drops.

Claire opened the door and grinned at her, a little too big. Was something up?

“Ann!” Claire exclaimed. “Great! Why don’t you come on in? I’ve got to run out real quick but don’t worry about me!”

“What?” Ann asked but Claire grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into the farmhouse, sidestepping past Ann in the same motion and stepping outside, shutting the door.

Ann blinked in surprise to see that the only other person in Claire’s home was Karen. The bedding had been pulled from Claire’s large bed, a pile of blankets and pillows spread out like a fort on the floor. Ann flushed and looked back to the door; through a window, she saw Claire leaving the farm, likely heading to Gray’s. Ann had been set up.

“Hey,” Karen said, lifting a wine glass with a smile. “Happy Spring Thanksgiving.”

“Um, happy Spring Thanksgiving,” Ann stammered. “Where, ah, did Claire go?”

Karen gestured for Ann to come sit down at the table with her, which Ann did, setting the basket on the table. Karen grinned, pulled out one of the bottles of wine, and poured Ann a glass. “Well,” she said at last, “I think Claire’s gone to Gray’s. They’ve been getting pretty serious, you know.”

“Yes,” Ann said, taking a nervous sip of wine. But why did she leave me here alone with you? What is that farmer up to? She tried to keep from watching the movement of Karen’s hands as she slid the glass across the table, the way her fingernails gently brushed the surface of the wood. She wanted to touch Karen that way…

That way lay madness. Karen took another generous sip of wine (the woman could drink anyone in town under the table) and said, “Well, then, are you ready to celebrate?” She winked and gestured to a pile of pillows and blankets thrown in front of the television set. “My idea.”

Ann’s heart beat faster. “Your…idea?” she stammered again. Karen rolled her eyes and reached out, wrapping her hand around Ann’s. Ann’s mouth opened in something like shock. Her fingers, though, reacted as if on their own, clasping Karen’s hand tightly. Karen’s smile softened.

“Look, Ann, I’ve liked you for a while. And I… I didn’t want you to feel any pressure. So if you wanna you can leave right now.” But her hand held tight to Ann’s.

Ann couldn’t help but smile and lean forward, kissing Karen’s cheek before she could talk herself out of it. “I’ve liked, I like you too,” she said.

Karen exhaled, like a sigh of relief, and reached to cup Ann’s cheek. Outside, a lightning bolt cracked and rain beat softly at the windows.

—-

When Claire came home the next morning, a bleary Gray walking her to the door, Ann and Karen hardly stirred. The television was still on, playing the home shopping channel, bathing Karen and Ann in white-blue-gray light. Karen’s head rested on Ann’s shoulder, one arm flung over Ann, and between them, their two hands, still, held tight.

Claire smiled and backed out of the little home, pushing Gray out behind her. She’d do her farm chores first and leave them to their sweet dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An anon request produced this drabble about Ann and Karen from Mineral Town!


	40. Pampering: The Ladies of Forget-Me-Not Valley

The tea kettle hissed and Pony jumped, startled. Muffy rubbed her shoulder soothingly. On the farmer’s other side, Lumina had managed to pull away the nail polish brush and keep from smearing the manicure she’d been focusing on for the last twenty minutes. Standing behind the chair where Pony sat at her kitchen table, Flora dropped the farmer’s hair for a moment to keep from pulling it. Muffy pulled back from doing her makeup until she had recovered.

“Sorry,” Pony said, her voice low. Muffy hated the way she sounded like she was waiting for a blow, for someone to use a dead name or a slur. When Pony first moved to Forget-Me-Not Valley, Muffy had befriended her immediately, and it was well-known that anyone to be cruel to her would face face the blonde barmaid’s particular rage, but that wasn’t always enough to protect her friend. And when it wasn’t, a sleepover was called for.

“You’re fine,” Lumina assured Pony, blowing gently on her drying nails. “There. Once it dries, I’ll paint little hearts on them, won’t that be cute?”

Pony smiled, that tender little smile that made Muffy’s heart ache. “You know, I wear farming gloves all the time, no one will even get to see them,” she said softly.

“But you’ll know they’re there,” said Flora, resuming her combing and braiding of Pony’s hair. “And the gloves may even protect your nails, keep the paint from scraping off. I wear gloves at the dig all the time to save my nails.”

In the kitchen, Celia finished chopping vegetables for the soup and began to wash her hands; Nami began pouring the hot water from the kettle over six mugs full of water and tea bags, ignoring the sideways glance of disapproval from Celia for improper tea technique. “That just needs to simmer for a bit and we’ll be ready for food!” She took two mugs and carried them to the table while Nami expertly brought the other four (Muffy wondered in moments like these if Nami had worked in the food service industry before).

“You’re all being so nice to me,” Pony whispered as Nami set a mug of tea down before her, squeezing her shoulder gently. “Really, I’m fine.”

Muffy smiled and brushed a fine layer of powder over Pony’s cheeks. “Sweetheart, we’re your friends, and we love you. And besides, we all love makeover parties. Even those of us who just watch and eat the food.”

“Don’t call me out,” Nami deadpanned, but she slid one of the cookies Celia had made over toward Pony. “Are your nails dry? I can break it up into pieces and feed them to you.”

Celia sat down across the table from Pony and said, “This is so much fun! And I’ll come over tomorrow morning and help you with your chores so you don’t have to bother your hands too much. You do so much around here, you deserve pampering.”

Pony’s eyes brightened with tears and Muffy didn’t say anything, just kissed her friend on the cheek. “We’re here for you, always, sweetheart. For food and makeovers and pampering, we’re here for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an anon request for some platonic fluff about the ladies of Forget-Me-Not Valley!


	41. Unseen: Celia, Mark, & Son

Celia stared at her son, then said slowly, “Sweetie, can you say that again?”

Her husband coughed low under his breath and her son said again, “I wanna go see the li’l mushroom men! They, they’re cute, and they like me, and they give me presents, and I wanna go.”

Celia shifted her attention to Mark, and he wilted a little in his chair. “What do you know about strange men giving our son presents, honey?” she said, her voice a little tight. This was the first time her son had ever said anything like this, and…well, she was curious. To say the least.

Mark shifted and finally said, “I didn’t think you’d believe me.” At this point, Celia sent their son out on the farm to play with the cows for a while, pestering them as he always did, and she and Mark had the room to themselves. Celia loved her husband, she really did, his floppy hair, his quiet smile, his dogged dedication to their family and farm. But sometimes, as now, when he struggled to get the words out to explain to her what their son had said, she wasn’t sure where on earth he’d learned to communicate.

Possibly from his animals.

Over tea (and as Celia was reassured that her son hadn’t been tricked by someone that Mark didn’t know, at least), Mark finally told her what their child was talking about. Harvest Sprites. Little fae creatures in the forest, by the spring, living in the tree. Celia tried to keep an open mind, once Mark got talking. He said that before he’d even met her, when he’d first come to the Valley, he’d met these sprites, been able to see them when no one else seemed to. That over the years they’d been harmless little friends, running around the farm or living in their tree. They’d even been the ones to give him the blue feather he used to propose. He told her that when their son was born, the sprites congratulated him, and since, they’d been occasional visitors. Apparently, though, they hadn’t only waited for Mark to be around to visit his son, and that was what the boy had been referencing.

Celia listened to all this with as neutral an expression as she could muster. When Mark finally finished, she sighed and nodded. “I can see why you thought I might not…understand,” she said slowly. “But, I do want to. Maybe… Could you take me to try to meet them? The harvest sprites?”

Mark raised his eyebrows. “They’ve been in the same room as you before,” he said, “and you haven’t been able to see them. Before.”

Celia rolled her eyes and said, “Well, this time I’ll be looking.”

There was no dissuading her, and fifteen minutes later, the family was walking to the spring, the child running before them and chattering excitedly about seeing the “li’l mushroom men” again. Celia was used to the soft blue glow of the crystal flowers, the gentle murmur of the spring, but now she was watching every shadow, any small movement potentially tiny people. Did she really believe this? She’d lived in Forget-Me-Not Valley her whole life, and like so many people she’d heard stories about Harvest Sprites, but it felt childish to be looking now…

No. She knew her husband, loved him, and if he said that he and their son were seeing the sprites, then she wanted to try, too.

They stopped by the spring and while their son splashed in the water, Mark called, “Nik? Nak? Flak? I want to introduce you to someone.” Celia tried to follow his gaze, watch what he was watching, see what he was seeing. Mark’s expression changed and he murmured, “Hey, guys,” but Celia couldn’t see anything in the direction of his eyes, at the base of the tree. Mark squatted down and Celia dropped, too.

“Friends!” their son cried, leaving the spring to run to the base of the tree. He bent down and seemed to pick something up, and Mark said quickly, “Now, son, put Flak down, be gentle.”

“They’re here?” Celia whispered, squinting into the place where her family was interacting with something she couldn’t see, some world she had no access to. Her son came into her arms and she stroked his hair, watching Mark’s face carefully.

“Yes,” he said, holding out his hand as if three tiny men stood there before them, as if she should be able to see what existed. “This is my wife, guys,” he said. “She’d like to meet you.”

There was a long silence, Mark nodding occasionally, their child giggling, and Mark said at last, “All right, love, try watching that red mushroom there.” He pointed at a large mushroom growing by the base of the tree. “They’re going to stand there and try to make themselves visible to you. So, just, watch there.”

Celia nodded and frowned at the mushroom, willing the sprites into her sight. I want to see them, I want to see them, I want to know… Long moments of silence, again, and nothing flickered suddenly into existence, nothing changed.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Celia said finally, and despite herself, she was sad. It was as if a door was closing, herself on one side, her husband and son on the other, and she brushed a quick hand over her eyes, wiping away surprising tears before they could see. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing to do with you,” Mark assured her, shooting a glare to the mushroom. “And if there’s something the sprites aren’t doing that they could be, then I’m annoyed at them.” 

Celia shook her head. “Thank you for trying, honey,” she said, and stood up, stretching. “Let’s go home, I’ll make us something sweet for a snack.” And if the glimmers in the corner of her eye might increase, then she’d set out saucers of milk, and if her flowerbeds grew a little better, then she’d leave out sweets and rolls of bread and hope that whatever magical beings looked over her husband and son, they would look favorably on her, as well.

And though she didn’t know it, they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was part of an art trade with abountifulharvest on Tumblr; they made me a cell phone lockscreen, and I wrote this short drabble about Celia learning that her son and husband both see the Harvest Sprites!


	42. Orphans: Mira as Molly's Mother AU

Mira looked down from the sleeping baby to Mayor Hamilton. He couldn’t be serious.

The Mayor, to his credit, looked abashed for a moment, perhaps questioning the idea he’d had. But then he straightened, ran a hand through his blond hair (he was already starting to bald, Mira noted, perhaps the stress of his own toddler). “I know there’s nothing anyone could say,” he said. “So I’m not going to try.” His lip quivered for a moment and Mira remembered – his wife, too, had started that deep, wet cough recently. Like Mira’s own William had, a few months back. Maybe nothing, maybe a cold.

Maybe something.

“But I think you two could help each other, Mira,” Hamilton continued. He held the swaddled infant out to her again. “If not you, Molly will just have to go back to the city. She doesn’t have any family left.”

The baby’s name was Molly. Mira peered at her, the sparse, pale hair like sparrow feathers.

“Let me think about it,” Mira said, but she took the baby from Hamilton, felt her warm, solid weight. The baby felt real in a way nothing else had in the last month. Since William…

Hamilton smiled, pushed forward the rolling crib with all the baby’s supplies stuffed inside. “Perfect,” he said, and left the widow and the orphan baby alone together.

****

Mira called, “Molly! Watch out for the rocks!” She had reached out without thinking, and seeing her hand stretching out to the six-year-old child, she pulled her hand back, wrapped her arms around her waist, fretting. Colleen beside her chuckled. “You worry so much,” she said, tugging at the thin cardigan Mira wore around her shoulders. Mira sat on the bench beside Colleen, but she was still watching their daughters playing on the beach with a slight frown. “Too much,” Colleen added, leaning forward and patting Mira’s knee to finally break her concentration, just a little.

Mira looked to the innkeeper’s daughter-in-law, sighing and tucking her hair behind an ear. It was a windy day (they’d been having fewer and fewer of those lately), overcast and gloomy, and Molly had begged when she came home from her first day at the island school to have this beach playdate with her best friend Maya. Colleen’s daughter was bright and sunny in comparison to Molly; as if stained by the tragedy that fell so soon after her birth, she’d grown into a serious, quiet child, mild and easy. She never cried, not even when she was hurt or sick; Mira spent much of Molly’s childhood checking her temperature, putting her hand to her forehead to see if there was a silent fever reddening the girl’s cheeks. Still, sometimes, she caught herself doing that, even as Molly gently pulled away and said, “Mom, I’m feeling fine.”

“You’re probably right,” Mira said to Colleen quietly. She tried to focus on Colleen, forced a smile; even so, it was a small one, like a shadow of the smiles she saw on other people’s faces. “I do. I worry.”

Colleen smiled thinly at Mira and Mira wanted to recoil back – she recognized that smile. Pity. “Of course, why wouldn’t you,” Colleen said, clucking with the tip of her tongue, that awful, tsking, pitying way. After William’s death, Mira had heard that so many times, that little moment, that hesitation, that moment when someone was deciding how to talk to her, the widow, the woman who lived in the jeweler’s house with her thin, pale baby and the air of grief all around her. No one quite knew, no one, how to talk to her. Especially not this girl, Colleen – she’d come here with Jake, the innkeeper’s son’s wife, a happy, sunny bride. She was younger than Mira was when she’d fallen in love with William, and already she was a mother, someone with a job at her husband’s place of work. In Mira, what did this woman see? A shadow self, a mirror, there but for the grace of the Goddess.

“Yes,” was all that Mira said, her eyes turning back to her Molly, watching her run around the beach, watching her as she laughed and reached for her friend. She looked so carefree, so sunny, unlike her usual quiet in this moment. Maybe there was sun behind the clouds, for Molly – maybe the circumstance of her parents’ death wouldn’t shroud her forever.

Maybe the shrouds could come away.

But for now, Mira just kept watching her daughter running, wanting her to be happy, wanting for her everything, wanting a home, a place, all the happiness that the world had tried to take from Molly before she was even old enough to know that she had something to lose.

****

“Mom, I want to be a farmer.”

Mira’s hands froze as she worked at the lacy golden weave that she was working on, an intricate twist to grasp a little gemstone in a ring. Slowly, she set down her jeweler’s tools, laid them on the table carefully so she could pick them up again, and finally, turned to her daughter.

Molly had grown from a shy, pale child into a tall, solid young woman, her face heart-shaped and sweet, always gently smiling, walking slowly, meaningfully. Somehow, Mira’s daughter always seemed as if she had a purpose to what she was doing, and that sense of purpose had become Mira’s over the years. In the last nineteen years, Molly’s sense of purpose had guided Mira, and her daughter had given her a sense of purpose of her own, even if only as a mother, as someone who must exist for Molly’s sake.

And now she was saying something about farming. “Farmer?” Mira repeated, brushing her hands over her skirt, wiping away nonexistent dirt. “What makes you say that?”

Molly eased her tense stance in the doorway, as if she’d been expecting Mira to yell or snap or act as if Molly would just immediately fail at farming no matter what. But still, she seemed tense, nervous as she came into Mira’s workshop, rubbing her arms. Mira kept the workshop cold and Molly did hate being cold.

Mira sighed and reached out for her daughter, and Molly came across the room, perhaps a little slower than she did when she was a little girl. A pang in Mira’s heart – the sense that her girl, her child, her only heart, her Molly wasn’t small enough to tuck away in her home anymore.

But for now, still, Molly came across the room and let Mira wrap an arm around her waist, hug her tightly to Mira’s thin side. At a glance, Molly and Mira were clearly unrelated; where Mira was small, thin, pale, Molly had grown into a tall, bright young woman, her hair nearly pink in redness, her arms and legs thick and solid and strong. But everyone on the island knew Molly and Mira, from the carpenter’s boys to Ramsey’s nephew, from Irene’s grandson who had just returned from getting a doctorate to the general store owners’ daughter with her quirky ideas and inventions. Everyone, everyone in town knew that if you wanted to see Mira lose her temper, you had only to imply that Molly wasn’t perfect in any way.

Not that most folks did that more than once.

Molly sighed and leaned her head on top of Mira’s. “Mom, I want to be a farmer,” she repeated. “I’ve been spending more time with Anissa and her family on the farm, and Renee’s dad let me take over the care for one of their little calves. I loved it, Mom, I really, really loved it. I… I’ve never loved anything that much, I think, not school or anything like that.” She snorted and Mira chuckled. When she’d sent Molly off to the town school all those years ago, she would have thought that her daughter would excel in the quiet of study and reading, but despite Molly’s gentle, quiet nature, she still never took much to books. How opposite Molly was in some ways to Mira as a child had been. And in other ways, how similar.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it, darling,” Mira said quietly, reaching an arm back to rub Molly’s back like she used to do when Molly was feeling sick or hurt. “But… Isn’t it going to be hard? Working outside all day, and animals, and…”

“Well, isn’t working with jewels hard? Mostly it’s just refining things that end up being junk, you tell me that all the time. Why do you stick with that?”

Mira had to think about that one. What had drawn her to becoming a jeweler, all those years ago? It was hard to imagine now – she felt like herself as a girl of eighteen, still living on the mainland, not even having met William… Like that part of herself was so far away as to be another person entirely. What had drawn her to jewels, to this fiddly work of filigree and fine details, of refining and finding nothing, finding something? “I liked the shine,” she answered at last. “It sounds silly, but that’s why, back then.”

“And now? Don’t you still love it now?”

There was another tough question – Mira wanted to shrug but that seemed to hurt her point, to say that there was really nothing to tie her to this thing that she’d ended up doing with most of her life. Ever since she’d married William and moved with him to his home island, since she was twenty two years old, this was all she’d done with herself.

This, and taking care of Molly.

What would she do if one of her only two tasks was taken away?

Mira didn’t answer Molly’s question and asked instead, trying to keep her voice level and calm, “Would you want to move?” That broke her heart a little, just thinking about it – about Molly’s empty room, about the bed never slept in, about cooking just one breakfast for herself. Between William’s death and adopting Molly, there had only been a month and a half; Mira couldn’t remember eating at all in that time, not all these years later, and really she couldn’t imagine cooking just for herself after William’s death. That period, that empty, gaping, unhealed wound of Mira’s life, it all felt like nothing but a gray mess, a hurt that she didn’t like to think about. Did she even know how to take care of only herself in this home? Did she know how to take care of herself without someone else as the reason?

Molly sighed and Mira realized that this was why Molly had looked so defensive, across the room; it wasn’t that she feared Mira’s anger, of course it wasn’t, Mira could count the number of times she’d been angry with Molly on one hand. What Molly feared, what had kept her across the room with her soft face tilted defiantly, with her arms crossed defensively, had been the anticipation of Mira’s grief.

Molly kissed her mother’s head and said, “Yes.” Mira’s heart seized. “But not far. I’ve been talking with Hamilton, about what I can do for the island. And…” She turned her head and Mira looked up – Molly was looking off to the side, in the air, as if there was something she was listening to there. A dust mote, a shape of light? “And I want to try to help the island. Since before I can remember, things have been changing around here. Like there’s less wind, less life in the ocean, fewer creatures in the forest. I… I want to help, if I can. And I think I could help if I…” She blushed, looking back to her mother. “That sounds silly. But I really feel like I can make a difference, farming. Like if I work with my hands in the earth, I could do something to help that I can’t do as a student, as your apprentice.” She bit her lip anxiously, a nervous habit that Mira knew so well she often caught herself touching her own lower lip in sympathy. “I don’t… I don’t want you to be sad, Mom. I know things will change, but, well, not all of them. I love you, Mom.”

Mira’s heart went out to her. All these years, the two of them, the orphans both. She wrapped both her arms around her daughter, standing – when had Molly gotten so much bigger than her? “I love you, my heart,” Mira said, and tried again to imagine her home without Molly in it, without waking up to her rumpled yawning face at the kitchen table, without her snores from the other room as Mira fell asleep, without hearing over dinner how the days went. She tried to imagine the hole Molly would leave in her life when she left, the structures that would be torn up and…

And she was still Molly’s mother. Mira’s heart fluttered, started again – Molly’s impact on her life, the hole she’d filled, the way she made her life bright and sunny. The way she’d brought color into the world when all Mira could feel was gray.

“I love you,” Mira repeated, “wherever you go, darling, whatever you do. I love you more than the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was based on an anon prompt: what if Mira, from Animal Parade and Tree of Tranquility, was the farmer's mother?


	43. Blue: Mary x Candace

Solitude and peace, quiet and the airy dustmotes of the early morning, these brought us together. You, your hair black as beads, your eyes, dark as storm. You are shorter than me, softer, rounder, but our hearts are cut from the same gentle blue cloth.

You moved to my island, your father, a gatherer of plants. Your mother, weepy to have moved so far from home. I remember seeing you – you were only a year or so younger than me, your hair long and thick over your shoulder, large glasses, everything about you soft, even from a distance. We were practically babies, then, you and I. I was seventeen, readying for an apprenticeship with my grandmother. My younger sister would come to the island a few months after you, but that would be because of the death of our parents.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we met when you were walking down into town from your father’s house in the fields, out by the forest, where he could scavenge and hunt for the strange plants growing here. I looked out the window of my grandmother’s shop and saw you, hair dark, dressed in deep blue, walking on the sand with your shoes and socks in one hand and a little blue notebook in the other. I took a break from my knitting and impulsively, I went out to talk to you.

You froze when you heard my voice, as if you’d been caught doing something you weren’t supposed to, and I said, “Sorry.” I was surprised that you could hear my voice, over the crash of the ocean, the thousands of rearrangements of the sand and shells. It was cloudy, spring, air wet and humid and heady with the start of life after the winter’s death.

“You’re okay,” you said, and I hugged myself, struck with the fear that I had been rude, startling, that I’d scare you off like you were a bluebird I had tried to approach. I wanted to run back into my grandmother’s house, I wanted to pretend that I had never left the house at all and swallow my tongue into my throat. I could feel the redness of my cheeks, the embarrassment, the surety that I had done something wrong.

And then you moved a little closer to me. I had, still have, at least a head of height on you. Your hair was just a little dampened from the rush of the tide you’d been walking so close to. “I’m Mary,” you said, and I remember the way you tilted your head down, not quite a bow, not quite a nod, like something a bird would do, a gesture of greeting. “I’m new to Castanet,” you continued, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying that I knew, that I’d been on the beach when you and your parents got off the boat, that I knew you were new to town and I’d been wanting to find you and meet you ever since.

I smiled because I liked that I hadn’t ruined everything, that I hadn’t made you uncomfortable, and you asked me about where in town was quiet, where there were benches where you could sit and write. You loved to write, you told me. You wanted to work with books, like how you’d been helping out the local librarian and volunteering back home. I gave you the name of the mayor, told you that I’d go with you to speak with him about working in the local library, maybe opening one of the back rooms in the town hall into something like a library again. I told you where I lived, I told you that my name was Candace.

“I like that name,” you told me, then blushed, as if you’d said it without thinking, as if you thought you had embarrassed yourself.

You didn’t.

I did go with you, when you went to speak with Hamilton, when you went to start the hard work of gathering books and maybe opening the library back up from where it had been gathering dust since my parents’ childhoods. I went with you as you wandered town, then I went to visit you as you started regular shifts manning the library. You were the only one manning the library, sitting by yourself amidst all those huge, dusty, heavy books, dust motes floating through the sunshine, and you’d look up, you’d smile at me and the world would be bright and clear and warm.

Darling, I’ve loved you, oh, Goddess, I’ve loved you. I love the way your hands move when you’re telling a story, I love the way you look down when you need a moment to recall your bravery. You are so brave, darling, I want to make a place in my bones for you to curl up and rest when the world is too wearying, I want to make a home for you where you’ll always be safe and warm and loved.

We’ve been together nearly fifty years now, I know, I know. Our daughter has grown, her hair like mine, her eyes, her heart like yours. Brave, brave and thoughtful and peaceful. She makes me proud enough to burst, to make a permanent smile on my face, to make me cry when I think of all that she’s accomplished and how the world has cracked open for her, her oyster, her pearls. She has married, she’s found her story, her way to live. She’s made me proud. She’s made my life important.

I think of you, I think of our days spent quietly knitting, quietly writing, quietly loving one another. You are the quill of my soul, darling, you have written me into the world, made of me the character I always wanted to become. You, loving you, has made the story of my life one that I love. Oh, darling, please don’t cry. Please, please, my heart is always yours, please, don’t cry.

Come, lie in bed with me for a moment. Shh, shh. I know, my darling, I know. Shh, shh.

We’ve been together for so, so long. You’re braver than me, Mary, my heart, you always have been. You were the brave one when our daughter got so sick when she was a baby. You were the brave one when Hamilton died and the town wasn’t sure if Gill should take over or not. Remember how you yelled, when someone said that making Gill mayor would be nepotism? You threw the dictionary, you did, you did, I’m right, even if you don’t remember. And he’s been the best mayor this town has ever had, and you know it because you worked alongside him all those years. You told them that, all of them, and I still think your speech is really what made everyone calm down and hear reason. Because if quiet, sweet Mary is losing her temper, how right could anyone else really be?

You’re braver than I’ve ever been, Mary, darling.

You’ll have to be brave for me now.

Oh, Goddess… Darling, I…

I’ll send bluebirds to you, wherever I go. So when you see a bluebird, when you find little blue feathers around our backyard, you’ll remember how you climbed the mountain for me, all to bring back a blue feather for me. When you see flashes of blue, that’ll be me, reminding you that we had a lifetime of happiness, the two of us. We had half a century of love and softness and blue. We made love and we made children and we made grandmothers to some beautiful grandchildren. We made a life together, and I couldn’t be happier, even…

The only thing I’d ever want, Mary, Mary, my darling. The only thing I’d ever want is more time with you.

I’ll be with you, in every sign that I can. Bluebirds, dust motes, even silence, if you listen closely. I’ll be close in every moment, in every touch, every breath. No matter where I go, where I am, I love you, my Mary, my bluebird, my joy, my darling, my love. I’ll always, always love you, my blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a fic shipping Mary (from Friends of Mineral Town) with Candace (from Animal Parade and Tree of Tranquility)!


	44. Stay: Rick x Claire

Rick sat at the bar in the Mineral Town Inn, looking into his glass of wine. He could faintly see his reflection – the headband that pushed back his tawny hair, the huge glasses that hid his worried blue eyes, expression weary and anxious. As always. He leaned his head down on the counter and thunked his forehead against the study wood a few times.

“Rough day, chicken guy?” Ann asked from behind the counter, coming up with another glass of red wine. Rick wanted to scowl at the nickname (ever since childhood, he hadn’t liked it, or its implications) but found himself unable to bring that amount of negativity out from himself. He was just… Tired. Above all else, tired. What else was there to say, at the end of a long day like today?

“Yeah,” was all he answered, finishing off the first glass of wine and moving to the second. One of the chickens had tried to make a break for the river, which had meant that Rick went diving in (and of course it was fall, so the water was freezing) to keep the stupid hen from dying of hypothermia. And Popuri was still angry with Rick for “being rude to Kai” before he’d left for the summer (if Popuri was being fair, she’d realize that Rick only instigated about half those fights – Kai started the other half). And Mom’s anniversary was coming up, so she was starting to get into that forlorn, heartbreaking mood that made Rick want to go find his father and punch him in the teeth.

Yeah. Rough day.

Someone sat down at the seat beside Rick and said, “It’s that time of year, isn’t it?”

Rick glanced up to see Claire – the farmer who lived around the corner, the one who’d moved in a few years ago and had been giving Rick’s poultry farm a run for its money ever since. Rick often bought grown hens from Claire, after she’d hatched them and raised them; the eggs her chickens gave had steadily improved ever since Rick sold Claire her first chicken, probably three years ago, now. She’d really come into her own, and Rick liked her, even as some part of him felt competitive with her, too.

“That time of year?” he asked, not sure exactly what she meant. Claire was friends with Popuri; maybe she meant that it was the time of year when Popuri was bummed that Kai was gone? Which was certainly true.

Claire signaled to Ann and got her own glass of wine to sip at as she sat on the stool next to Rick; he was suddenly aware of their closeness to each other, that if he leaned to the side, their thighs would be touching. He’d had a bit of a crush on Claire when she first moved to town, but that had flickered out pretty quickly when he saw that Claire seemed to think of him as something of a worrywart big brother. Her and the rest of the people in town, it seemed.

Still, he liked her. A lot.

“Yeah, that time of year,” Claire went on when she had her glass of wine, turning to smile at Rick in that charming, blissful way she did. She was smart and hardworking and adorable, and that smile had all that in it. “Start of fall, end of summer. Lots of stuff going on at once.”

He nodded slowly, smiling back. “I didn’t realize you picked up on it,” he chuckled. Suddenly shy at the thought of Claire noticing the hard time of year, he looked down to his wine again, taking a slower sip. “Popuri’s grumpy, and of course it’s hard on Mom because her and Dad’s anniversary is coming up.”

“And it’s hard on you, too, of course.”

Rick blinked at her. For a moment, he literally gaped at her, unguarded in his expression. He was never very good at hiding how he felt.

“H-hard on me?” he repeated. “Um. Why? That is, why do you think that? There’s nothing coming up, not for me. I mean, my mother and Popuri, they both have to think about the men they love leaving them, that’s a completely separate thing.” He could feel how red his cheeks were and looked down, scratching a thumbnail on the bar’s varnish. Claire didn’t notice this stuff, surely. At least, she might have realized this time of year was hard for Popuri, for Lillia, but almost no one ever noticed that it was hard for him, too…

“Rick, come on,” Claire said, and smiled at him again, more softly this time… Softly? Why was she smiling at him so softly? And why did that make his heart surge up like he was going to faint, like she was going to make him burst just with that soft, sweet smile. “We’re friends. I’ve known you for more than three years now.” She leaned a little closer and it was as though he could feel her body heat from here, feel the warmth of her smile, her kindness. “Your father… He started talking about leaving at the end of summer, didn’t he?”

Rick swallowed hard and nodded. He’d forgotten he’d told Claire about this… It must have been a year or two ago, when he came to Claire’s to pick up one of the chickens she’d sold. This was the year that she had won the Chicken Festival for the first time, and they’d laughed and he’d bought her a drink earlier that season. But it was the end of fall, then, and he’d come to pick up the chicken she was selling with a glum look on his face. That was what she’d said, “Why do you look so glum?” And he’d answered, tried to keep his gloom to a minimum. He’d only said, “Ah, it’s that time of year. This is around when Dad first started talking about leaving to go find something to make Mom well again.”

What he didn’t tell her, then, not until she happened to visit him while he was cleaning his room, was how ever since his dad had finally done it, had finally left, Rick had blamed himself. If he’d just convinced him to stay, all those summers ago… If Rick had just said, “No, Dad, you have to stay here, Mom would rather be sick with you here than well because you were gone…”

“I didn’t say anything to him,” he said now, sitting in the bar, Claire the farmer, Claire the sweet, thoughtful farmer sitting on the stool beside him. “I didn’t tell him not to go. I should have. I should have done more to make him…” To make him stay, to make him keep Lillia’s heart unbroken.

Claire leaned closer to Rick and laid her hand over his on the bar. A small touch – she’d taken off her work gloves, her hair was warm. He could feel the callouses on her palms, her fingertips, the places where the tools must dig into the soft flesh of her hands even now, even with all her practice.

“You shouldn’t have to tell people who love you not to leave,” Claire told him softly, and all he was, all he could feel, was gratitude, was tears, was talking.

She didn’t leave him there at the bar. She listened to his anxieties and didn’t make him feel like a fool, she listened and murmured back to him. When they finally had to walk toward home, he walked her to her door and she turned before going into her farmhouse. “Are you all right walking home alone?” she asked him. And he remembered wondering if she didn’t want him to leave. He told her he was fine, now, and walked home with a glow in his chest, something warm and fluttering that he wasn’t sure what to do with yet. But Claire kept visiting him, more frequently now. He’d see her in the mornings as he carefully herded the chickens from the coop to their pen, and he’d see her in the evenings on her way back home, waving to him from the road. More often, after that first night, she’d join him at the bar; though few of their conversations turned to such painful subjects as that first night, they talked of everything, from the shallow day-to-days of their lives to the childhoods, to the people who impacted and hurt, to the dreams and fears.

The following year, Claire’s fourth year in town, as summer began to wane and Popuri’s sighing became longer and more pronounced, Rick asked Claire if she would stay with him, forever. If she’d let him love her, let him spend a lifetime making her smile.

She leaned forward and kissed him, as she’d done so many times since that first fall night, and told him, “You didn’t even have to ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a request from meepodhui over on Tumblr for a drabble featuring Rick and Claire from More Friends of Mineral Town!


	45. Brushing Close: Witch Princess x Angela

Angela leaned in the doorway of the Witch Princess and waited a moment before rapping her knuckles on the doorframe. In the moment before the Witch Princess turned and saw her, the moment before she realized she was being observed, the Witch Princess had this expression on her face that Angela couldn’t get enough of. This expression, somewhere between peace and curiosity and excitement, eagerness. Angela could never quite put her finger on what to name it, but there it was, in the way the Witch Princess tilted her head at her book, the way she stuck just the tip of her tongue between her lips, the way she frowned slightly then grinned. Little gestures, little ways of expressing that emotion Angela wanted to dive within.

And then she rapped on the doorframe and the Witch Princess turned to focus on her, eyes snapping to bright alertness. That sense of eagerness was gone, put behind what Angela was increasingly realized was a disguise. The Witch Princess snapped shut the book on the table and turned back to her potion with a practiced shrug.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, then turned and smiled more broadly. “What are you doing here, bothering me?”

Angela let the comment roll off her back; it was as close to a hello as the Witch Princess ever gave. “Just checking in,” she said smoothly, looking around at the pleasant chaos of the Witch Princess’s home. It always smelled of herbs here, lavender, dandelion tea, dried plants that Angela couldn’t name. She really wanted the Witch Princess to show her how to grow some of the stranger things, but the Witch Princess always brushed her off and acted as if it wasn’t something mortals could get the hang of. Ludicrous, if you asked Angela. She was a farmer, she’d brought the Harvest Goddess practically back from the dead and made the Harvest King reappear. What plant could the Witch Princess deal with that Angela couldn’t?

But that wasn’t why she’d come here today. “I wanted to ask if you wanted to come for a walk with me,” Angela said, walking over to lean back against the Witch Princess’s table. The Witch Princess glanced up at her, eyes that bright, nearly molten golden.

“Well, I can’t go into town, you know,” the Witch Princess said, looking back fixedly into her cauldron. “Or, I suppose, I could if I wanted to. But I don’t. Want to. So I won’t. So. What kind of walk would even work, then?”

Angela chuckled and leaned forward to catch the Witch Princess’s eyes again, grinning. “There’s the forest. You know, that one you enchanted so the path through is never the same twice.”

“Hey, hey, don’t go spilling secrets, I told you that as a secret,” the Witch Princess said, rolling her eyes in amusement. “All right, well, why, though?”

“Why, what?”

“Why did you come all the way here just to…” She paused, just for a moment. Other people might not have heard it. But Angela was used to the way the Witch Princess rolled her words down her tongue like stones down a hill, following in a rush, all quick so she could hide the feelings behind what she said. Angela heard in that pause a moment to gather thoughts, to phrase what came next in a way to give away as little of the Witch Princess’s thoughts as possible. “Just to waste my time? I walk around those trees all the time, what good would it do to just walk around with you for no reason?”

“Not for no reason,” Angela laughed. “Just, you know, walk, have a conversation, take in the sights.”

“I see the trees all the time–”

She was being intentionally contrary. Angela leaned closer, speaking over the Witch Princess’s shoulder like she was talking to the potion in the cauldron. “We can even hunt for Fugue Mushrooms, if you want. All of them go to you.”

The Witch Princess turned her chin, just a little, just a little space between her face and Angela’s. If Angela tilted herself forward just a little more, their cheeks might brush. She could smell the Witch Princess’s hair, like vanilla and snow, like blueberry and cold water.

A pause. Another of those thought-gathering, emotion-hiding pauses.

“All right, I suppose I could use a few more of those,” the Witch Princess said, her voice softer than it was a moment before. And then she snapped it tighter again like snapping a sheet and she said, “But you’d better not be annoying, dragging me away from my work like this. I could just send you out to get the mushrooms for me, really. That would make more sense. But you’re… You’re insisting, so that’s why I’ll come. Just so you stop yammering about it.”

Angela grinned and pulled back as the Witch Princess started buzzing around her house, putting away ingredients from the potion, putting a cover on the roiling brew. “Yeah, of course,” Angela said. “It’s just my insistence.”

She’d known the Witch Princess for years. When she first stumbled through the forest, when she’d first found the little house with the pink amphibian inhabitant, Angela had felt some part of her seize up, some part of her feel tied to the place, the chattering of summer insects in the air, the way the sun cut like ribbons through the trees as it set. She’d fished here, rode animals and hacked through trees, and when she met the Witch Princess herself (finally gathered enough materials for that quiet fortune-telling Wizard), Angela had come to think of the forest glen as something of a home for herself. As a place where she belonged, some wild part of her that still remembered what it was like to live near the forest. To live among the untamed things, to live where there were fairy tales and magic and wolves and looming woods.

So of course, when the pink frog turned out to be the silver-haired, golden-eyed Witch Princess, Angela needed to know her. Felt drawn to her, felt herself wanting to open to the Witch Princess like some flowers do before the light of the stars. She listened, she brought gifts, spent hours and days just wanting to be near the Witch Princess, watching her expressions, the things that made her happy or genuinely annoyed, the things that she stopped herself from saying. Angela could write poems upon poems about the way the Witch Princess tilted her head, almost unknowingly, when she was curious about something she heard.

Angela could wait longer. She could wait until the Witch Princess was ready to push through those pauses, push into what she really wanted to say.

For now, she’d be content with days like this, walking through the endlessly changing forest, close enough to brush her hand now and then against the Witch Princess’s, close enough to feel the coolness of her, close enough to almost hear what she wasn’t saying.

What she wasn’t saying, yet.

And of course, when the day came (and it would) when the Witch Princess would one day reach out first, would one day finish the words she wanted to spit out, would one day reach to see if Angela felt this attraction, this love…

Well, Angela would be right there, just waiting to be let in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an anon request for something shipping the Witch Princess and Angela from Animal Parade!


	46. Advice: Rick

Kai chuckled and nudged his brother-in-law in the shoulder light-heartedly. “You really don’t know what to get Claire for Valentine’s Day? Come on, dude, you’re kidding.”

Rick pursed his lips and Kai tried to get a hold of himself – that was the sour face he made when he was definitely not kidding. Like that one off-color joke Kai had made when they first met, all those years ago, something stupid about a kissing checklist and… Yeah, remembering that screw up was enough to calm Kai down. “Oh, okay, okay. Well, that’s fine. Not the end of the world. Valentine’s presents aren’t hard, it’s just a matter of, like, what she’s into.”

Rick was slowly uncrossing his arms. At least there was that. In the years since Kai had married Popuri, he and Rick had started to get along better; with Rick’s father, it didn’t surprise Kai that the guy needed proof that Kai wasn’t a flake, a playboy or whatever else. “And it’s cool that you’re asking me for advice,” Kai added as the thought came to him. “Really, it is. I’m psyched to help you figure it out.”

Rick made a sound that was a cross between a huff and a snort. Popuri called it his ‘sniff of forgiveness.’ “All right, then, well,” Rick said, as if embarrassed at what Kai had said. “I just don’t want to disappoint her, is all.”

What was it with Kai’s in-laws and not being direct? Kai would never get that instinct to move away from the subject, to avoid addressing things directly. But whatever, they were back onto Valentine’s. “Well, Claire likes flowers,” Kai said slowly, leaning against the kitchen counter of his shack shop. Rick coming to the shack had been a surprise enough earlier, but asking for advice for Valentine’s gifts for Claire was a new one. Kai did suppose it was the first Valentine’s since they’d started dating…

“Yeah, of course, but flowers seems so basic,” Rick interjected with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s the first idea I had, the first idea you had, I don’t want her to think I didn’t put any thought into it.” He pulled out a scrap of paper from the front pocket of his apron, along with a stubby pencil. There were several dark clouds of graphite on the sheet, apparently ideas that had been crossed out. Kai couldn’t count them all before Rick shoved the sheet back in his apron pocket, but there were definitely more than twelve ideas that had been lost and scratched out. “I don’t know, I guess you don’t have ideas either,” Rick said. “Sorry, I should just, I don’t know, go with… I just don’t want her to feel let down, you know? I want it to be a special Valentine’s Day, I want to see her face light up.” He flushed and looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, I just, I don’t want to disappoint her. That’s all.”

Kai grinned and reached over, bumping Rick’s shoulder again with his fist gently. “I totally get that. You know, the first gift-giving occasion Popuri and I had, I was so nervous about getting her something good that I almost broke up with her.”

“What?!” Rick yelped, looking at Rick with wide, outraged eyes. Yup, attention diverted from focusing on what to get Claire. “What in the Goddess’ name kind of thing is that to say? How –”

“Well,” Kai said smoothly while Rick sputtered indignantly for a moment. “I thought, man, if I can’t even come up with a decent gift to give her, should she even be wasting her time on me? If I can’t think of something nice to do for this amazing woman, then, man, she needs to get a better man.” He grinned and laughed. “That was a long time ago, I guess, but I still remember the pit in my stomach. Won, next door, he even got me to buy one of those awful apples with the incomprehensible names. Because I was so messed up about not wanting to mess up.”

Rick blinked and started to calm down, though he glared a bit still and said, “You should have led with that part. That part’s nice and doesn’t make me think we’re going to have to stop being friends.”

Kai grinned and slapped Rick lightly on the back. “Hey, bro, Popuri and I have been married for years now. Would you really stop being my friend completely overnight?”

Rick grinned broadly back and said, “In a heartbeat,” then laughed, unwound.

After another half an hour, Rick finally had an idea he was pleased with – a watch for her to wear, something similar to the childhood treasure that Rick had had as a boy, the watch that Rick had eventually let Claire keep, even though it no longer worked. This one would be functional, though, this one would be customized, this one would have her initials and his carved carefully into the back casing. This one would be from R to C, with love.

And maybe Rick would end up throwing some flowers in there, too. And chocolate. Because classics were classics for a reason, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a request from meepodhui on Tumblr for a fic about Rick asking Kai for Valentine's Day gift advice!


	47. Clarity: Kasumi x Komari

Kasumi took a deep breath and ran a hand down the handle of her naginata. Breath, air, focus. Clarity. Peace. She moved in a quick gesture, slicing in half an apple sitting on the bench, and at her side, Komari squealed with laughter.

“That’s amazin’, Kasumi!” Komari laughed, casually wrapping an arm around Kasumi’s waist and hugging her tightly. “Wow! I can’t believe you can do that! Can ya teach me?”

Kasumi arched an eyebrow and tried not to focus on the feeling of Komari’s arm at her waist, the way it rested in such a familiar, friendly way just over her hip… Like it was meant there, like it fit perfectly into the puzzle of Kasumi. “It might take us quite a while, and I am not the expert that you might prefer,” she said after a moment. “But I suppose I could make an attempt to teach you. Only you must forgive me for my failures to teach such a delicate art. I am still truly only a student myself.”

“But ya look so cool!” Kasumi laughed. She took her hand away from Kasumi’s side (was there a sudden breeze, a chill?) and walked to the bench, picking up the top half of the apple and examining it curiously, turning it in her hand. She ran a finger over the apple’s inside, feeling how smooth the cut was, and took a bite of the apple with a laugh. “That’s so cool, do ya have any idea how much faster this would make vegetable prep work and cooking?” She made a slashing motion with her free hand like she was already slicing through the vegetables with ease.

Kasumi frowned and carefully began to clean her naginata of anything that might have dirtied it (or made it sticky – it WAS an apple, after all) before she slid it gently into its case. Slicing the apple had been a demonstration, more than anything else… It hadn’t been meant as a possible application of the naginata. “This is not precisely a traditional way to use the naginata,” she said slowly. “Indeed, some other students of the blade might scold me if they were to see my use of it, or indeed, my master might be disappointed to see me so misuse my teachings.” She blushed – she hadn’t even thought of how her teacher might have reacted to see her star pupil using dignified, well-trained movements against an apple. She got the sense that her teacher definitely wouldn’t approve of doing it just to impress the cute girl from the teahouse, no matter what else she thought…

Of course that wasn’t the only reason Kasumi had agreed to show Komari her naginata routine. Definitely not. That would be immature and ridiculous. Which Kasumi was not. Not either of those things.

“Aw, well, I don’t have to do it exactly like that, I guess. I’m pretty good with the ol’ dicin’ knife anyway, I guess. But it would still be really cool to learn how to handle the naginata!” Komari took another large bite out of the apple half in her hand, picking up the other half and offering it to Kasumi. Kasumi took it carefully, trying to avoid getting any of the sticky juice on her fingers, and nibbled at the side delicately.

Komari swallowed loudly and tilted her head at Kasumi. Kasumi was about to ask her what she was considering, what she was thinking about, and then Komari blurted suddenly, “Kasumi, yer so pretty.” Komari blushed brightly and Kasumi froze with another bite of apple right at her lips. “I just, I mean, sorry, I know that’s awkward, but the way ya eat, even, and seein’ ya with that naginata, and gosh, I’m soundin’ like a huge fool. But, yer just, yer so pretty, and I love spendin’ time with ya, and yer so sophisticated and amazin’, I just wanna spend more time with ya. Would that be something we could do, maybe? Or, I mean, even if ya don’t, or this is too weird, or ya just wanna be friends, I mean, whatever you wanna do. I just really like ya and I can’t keep from blurtin’ it out anymore.” Komari clamped her mouth shut as if it had run away with her and then took another huge bite of the apple as if giving herself something to keep from going on. Her cheeks were nearly as red as that apple’s skin.

Kasumi could feel her heart pounding, feel her own cheeks growing redder, too. “Komari…” She couldn’t find her words, couldn’t find anything around the pounding of her heart. She stepped closer to Komari, though, brought her hand closer to her cheek. She took a deep breath.

Breathe. Air. Clarity. Peace.

“I’d love to spend more time with you, too,” she said finally, and of course, they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a fic featuring Komari and Kasumi from Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns!


	48. Ribbon: Yuzuki x Hinata

Hinata knocked shyly on the door of Yuzuki’s workshop. His grandmother had already let the aspiring actor inside, but it felt like an imposition to barge into the workshop without asking… Yuzuki was hunched over the bench with what looked like a pair of tweezers in one hand and a long needle in the other. On the table before him was a strip of what looked like blue silk, from what Hinata could see – though he supposed he didn’t know a lot about making jewelry or fancy things. But Yuzuki did, and that was what Hinata was here for.

At least, that was what he was going to say he was here for. Because “hey, we should turn our weekly lunches into weekly lunch dates” felt a little strong to Hinata.

Oh, Goddess, was this coming on too strong? Geez, he hadn’t thought this through, he’d just, he’d been talking to Holly, and she advised him to go for it, and – ah, and now Yuzuki was turning around in his seat with those soft eyes and that smile and he said, “Oh, hello, Hinata. How are you doing today?” He looked to a little clock set up on the end of his workbench. “It’s not time for lunch yet, is it? Quite? Or has my clock decided to stop working?” He chuckled softly at the joke, and Hinata’s heart fluttered. Dang it, just a little chuckle, a little smile and Hinata felt like he was sitting in the sunshine, dozy and sleepy and comfortable.

“No, no, it’s not time for lunch yet,” Hinata said hastily. It had been Yuzuki’s idea to start talking walks over to Lulukoko a few seasons back, having lunch on the beach with the breeze. The sea air, sometimes, in smaller doses, was good for Yuzuki’s health, and it was relaxing, the walk, the food, the atmosphere. And over time, Hinata’s crush on Yuzuki had just grown bigger and bigger… And now here he was today. “I, uh, I wanted to maybe commission you for a piece,” Hinata blurted out, blushing despite himself. “Just, for a play I’m doing. I need a…” Shoot, what had he been thinking he’d ask for? He couldn’t think of it – not even the play he was in right now, not even the character he was playing. Something with a knight…? “A ribbon,” Hinata spat out after a few moments’ awkward pause. “Sorry, uh, brain fart. I guess.” Why was he talking about farting?? “I’m playing a knight. In this play. And, uh, I’m supposed to have a ribbon to show that I’m fighting for someone…?” He could feel his red cheeks, that he wasn’t explaining well, but Yuzuki jumped in with a smile.

“Like a token of affection?” he asked. “Ladies would often give their favored knights handkerchiefs they’d embroidered to show that they fancied that particular knight. Is that the sort of thing you mean?”

“Yeah, exactly!” Hinata said, grinning broadly in relief. Yuzuki always seemed to hear what he was actually trying to say… “Yes, yeah, a token of affection. From the play I’m in. It’s based on old castle stories from the West, I think. The play I’m in.” Now that the pressure was gone (this might not bode well for him being able to remember lines…) he could rattle off a few things about the play. He wasn’t the lead, but he’d be leaving town for a weekend to be in the show; for now, he was traveling every weekend for practices, but he’d need the token in a few weeks for the first live performance.

“And you told someone that you could provide this prop?” Yuzuki asked curiously. “Why did they ask this of you? Of course I am happy to provide it, but generally I understood that the props tended to be the responsibility of the people running the play. That’s only my understanding, though. I could of course be wrong. All I know of the ways plays are put together behind the scenes comes from you.” And he smiled and Hinata’s heart melted like it had been doing for months and months now. He’d started being extra goofy around Yuzuki, just to get that smile…

“Ah, yeah, well,” Hinata stammered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I, uh, mentioned I knew someone who did really great work, and I was asked to bring something in. So how much can I pay you?”

Yuzuki chuckled and shook his head, setting down the tools he’d been working with as he turned in his chair to face Hinata fully. “Let’s talk about what you’re looking for over lunch, first,” he said, smiling as he stood and brushed his kimono clean of dust Hinata couldn’t see. “It’s a little earlier than usual, but we can think of designs on the way to our meal. Do you know the color schemes or themes of the character who is giving yours this token?”

They talked quietly as they walked to Lulukoko – Hinata managed to bluff that the person whose favor he would have in the play (he took heart in the fact that Yuzuki was also using gender neutral terms to describe the non-existent role, at least) would have the color scheme of blue and purples, while Hinata’s themes were going to be greens and yellows. “The day and night sky to your character’s earth and sun, hmm?” Yuzuki remarked with a chuckle. Hinata said that the ribbon should be big enough to tie around Hinata’s arm wrapped in armor (“They won’t let me bring it out here or I’d let you measure it,” he lied, cheeks bright). And that it should have a message stitched on the inside.

“What sort of message?” Yuzuki asked as they reached their traditional table by the edge of the deck in Lulukoko, looking out over the ocean. Iluka started working on their orders that hadn’t changed in several months and Siluka came over with drinks, saying, “Aren’t you two earlier than usual?”

“Yes,” Hinata said quickly, and opened his mouth as if he would explain… But wouldn’t that make it more obvious that there was a reason? Which, technically, he didn’t need to make obvious. If it wasn’t already.

Siluka blinked at Hinata for a moment, then shrugged and went back to the bar. But before she left, Hinata could swear he heard her mumble something about a pink aura…

Once Hinata gave a few more fake descriptions of the ribbon (as it got closer to done, he’d ask Yuzuki to add a message to the inside – this would be where Hinata actually asked Yuzuki to be his boyfriend, he supposed, though it panicked him to think about it too much now) their conversation turned to what it always did during their lunches. Casual talk about their weeks, Yuzuki’s more interesting clients, Hinata’s failures and successes with getting callbacks for plays. Little discussions, things from realizing that Hinata didn’t like wasabi (“but have you tried it on your fish?”) to that they both knew several girls named Sakura growing up. Little ways of comparing their weeks, their experiences, their lives and finding common ground in between. As always, Hinata walked Yuzuki home by three and walked back to his own home, running through the things they’d talked about at lunch like running his fingers over smooth stones he wanted to make into keepsakes. The little things Yuzuki had said, the way he smiled so gently, the way he covered his mouth with a hand when he was chewing his food… All these little ways Hinata had fallen in love wit him, over these several seasons, over their lunches and meetings and lives.

The following week, Yuzuki said that the materials for the ribbon were coming it (“It should be red, to symbolize love and the meeting of the sky and the sun. Like a new dawn for both characters,” Yuzuki said, and Hinata agreed with him), and that the beads that Yuzuki would be using to adorn it were coming soon, too. Hinata covered lunch in celebration, and Yuzuki promised to update Hinata on the status of the ribbon as soon as the postman delivered more materials. At the second lunch after Hinata had placed his “commission order,” Yuzuki said that it would only be a few more days; the right color of thread was coming in now, but the beads that Yuzuki would use to make the ribbon token stand out more would be arriving a little later.

Hinata had never been wonderful at waiting, and waiting for the materials to arrive, to get to the point where he could finally give Yuzuki the message he really wanted to express, felt like agony. How could anyone hide feelings like this for years? Wayne had talked once about someone he liked in a town far away, and how he’d just said hello to them every morning for two years before the first move was finally made. Hinata felt like he was bursting just from having to wait a week. But he could do it, he could wait, he wanted Yuzuki to feel special and wanted. He wanted him to be surprised.

So when Yuzuki finally let Hinata know that the silk thread had come in and it was time for Hinata to let him know the message that would be embroidered onto it, Hinata had to practice what he was going to say. “Will you go out with me?” felt so juvenile, and “I love you” felt way too intense to throw out there right away. He procrastinated going over, even though Holly had delivered the message that Yuzuki wanted to see him (with a self-satisfied smirk on on her face, too – she was enjoying Hinata’s discomfort and nervousness far too much)… There was so much at stake here! What if he said it wrong, or said it poorly? What if he wasn’t clear enough and Yuzuki misunderstood, or, Goddess, what if Yuzuki didn’t feel the same way and misunderstood and thought that Hinata just wanted to be friends forever?? Which, well, he did, but also…

He sighed and paced in front of the bridge leading to Yuzuki’s home with his grandparents, staring at the water, trying to think of something good to have written on the ribbon. Something that wouldn’t be too intense or too demanding, but something that would let Yuzuki know what he meant. Something that wouldn’t be too immature or simple, but something that wouldn’t make Yuzuki feel awkward if he didn’t feel the same way.

“Lot at stake here, so stay calm, Hinata,” Hinata muttered to himself, watching a fish dart back and forth near the edge of the water. “Lot at stake, stay calm, don’t let yourself freak out, don’t freak out, don’t get it wrong, lot at stake, lot at –”

“Hinata?”

Hinata yelped and jumped sideways, landing in the shallow creek, startling away the fish he’d been watching. Yuzuki stood on the porch of his grandparents’ home, arms wrapped around himself for warmth, smiling amusedly.

“Yuzuki! Hi!” Hinata yelped, hopping out of the creek and kicking his feet to shake off some of the water. “Hi! Sorry!”

“What are you sorry about? There is nothing to apologize for.” Yuzuki stepped down from the porch and walked over to the bridge, standing near Hinata. “Are you all right?” He looked concerned, and reached out a hand to cup Hinata’s elbow as if ensuring he wouldn’t fall over.

Hinata blushed bright red. “Uh, yeah, yeah, everything is fine, I’m fine, I didn’t hurt myself or anything. I, uh, yeah, let’s go inside, and uh, I’ll write down the message that should go on the ribbon.” Dang, and he hadn’t actually come up with anything…

He followed Yuzuki back to his workshop, but his mind was blank – what was he going to say?? Yuzuki settled at his workbench and patted the spot next to him for Hinata to sit down.

“All right,” Yuzuki said, “so –”

“I really like you and I want to maybe go on a date in like a romantic way with you because I really like you!” Hinata blurted all at once.

A moment of dead silence. Hinata felt like his heart was going to burst. That, or he was just going to die right then and there. What was wrong with him? He clapped a hand over his mouth.

Yuzuki blinked at him, then broke into a gentle smile. “Oh,” he said after a moment. And he put one hand over Hinata’s, gently squeezed. “Well, that is a rather long message. I’m not sure it will fit next to mine.” With his other hand, he unfurled a curled bit of red ribbon that had been lying on his work table; in careful, beautiful script were written the words, “Will you be mine?”

And Hinata gasped and grinned widely, squeezing Yuzuki’s hand back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a request from babypunter3000 over on Tumblr for a fic featuring Hinata and Yuzuki from Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns!


	49. Eyes Open: Elise x Annie

Elise heard voices from outside her bedroom window and looked out to her front lawn to see that farmer girl coming up here again. Annie, right, that was her name. Ever since Elise had graciously, generously helped Annie get a horse, she’d been coming around to bother Elise and distract her servants, yammering and bringing gifts and generally being a nuisance. What was she doing here today? Probably bringing a butterfly or some nonsense.

A bell rang in Elise’s room, letting her know that downstairs, they were alerting her to a visitor. As if she hadn’t seen already! Maybe she should start stationing someone right at the front gate to run ahead and warn the mansion… Not that there was a lot to do when Annie came over. Only that Elise liked to take a moment, calm the butterflies in her stomach (where did they come from?) and put on her practiced look of aloof disdain.

“My lady, Annie of Oak Farm is here to call upon you,” said Elise’s butler, opening the door to the drawing room and peering in with his small, bespectacled face. “Would you like to receive her?”

“Fine,” Elise sighed airily, and immediately after (before the butler could even quite remove his head from the door), Annie burst in, looking around with bright-eyed interest as she always did.

“Hi, Elise,” Annie greeted, grinning as she crossed the room in confident strides. “How’s it going? I have something for you.”

“You’re tracking mud on my carpet,” Elise responded haughtily, but Annie wasn’t listening, digging around in the worn rucksack hanging from her hip.

“Ah, here it is,” Annie muttered, then took out what seemed to be some sort of thermos. “Here! I’ve finally gotten some decent tea bushes going, and I brought some for us to try together.”

“Try together?” Elise repeated in surprise, but Annie was delicately setting down two chipped china cups on the table, one at Elise’s elbow and the other at the empty seat beside her. The cups were nocked with chips and age, the faint lilac pattern that used to be around the rim apparently rubbed away by overly vigorous hand washing.

“Yes, yes, I brought enough for both of us,” Annie said excitedly, sitting down next to Elise after she’d set up the tea. With a proud grin on her face, she poured from the thermos, and a lovely smell of spiced tea floated into the air. “I brought some milk and honey, too, from my hives and cows.”

“Ah, I haven’t felt the urge to beekeep for a while,” Elise managed (yes, and she’d die before she’d admit that this was because Annie always beat her at the competitions for the fields). “So. It’s good that you brought honey.”

Annie was still busily setting up the little table; Elise rang her little bell to summon a servant, telling them to bring up the cakes and biscuits that had been intended for tea later in the day. Better to use them now, Elise supposed, while she had company and was trying to be a good hostess. Even if it was rather rude of Annie to bring all these things over without asking or checking if Elise would be able to host properly.

Still, she watched Annie’s quick, light hands go about the work of setting the little table just as if she belonged here. “You’re doing it wrong,” Elise said quietly under her breath, but Annie either didn’t hear her or pretended not to, grinning as she took a few peaches from her bag as well. “Is it clean in there?” Elise asked snarkily. “Haven’t been putting any animal waste in there, have you?” Why was she being hostile? This was a nice thing Annie was trying to do, even if she was doing it poorly… Elise bit her lower lip, anticipating Annie’s face falling, her packing up her things and leaving as Elise chased off yet another person who was just trying to be her friend, to be nice to her… This was exactly why Father always said Elise was so ill-tempered and lonely. She chased away everyone.

Annie laughed and smiled at Elise, shaking her head. “Why would I put animal waste anywhere but in the manure pile, doofus?” she chuckled, beginning to pour the tea into the two little cups.

Elise blinked at her. “Doofus?” she said indignantly, almost forgetting that she’d just been so hostile to Annie and all she’d gotten was called a silly name. Why was Annie putting up with her? And calling her silly names? She took a sip of the tea and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “This is delicious,” she said automatically, taking another sip and closing her eyes to savor the taste.

And because her eyes were closed, just for a moment, she didn’t see the way Annie looked at her, the soft, sweet way she smiled when Elise seemed pleased by the taste. Elise didn’t see that Annie adored her, that she didn’t mind Elise’s attempts at being hostile or pushing people away because ultimately, she was kind and honest and strong and beautiful.

Elise didn’t see it then.

But one of these times, her eyes would be open.

And another, she’d actually believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a request from southparkiankatie over on Tumblr for a fic featuring Annie and Elise from Story of Seasons!


	50. Pairing + First Sentence of Fic = 6-Sentence Fic

The Harvest King knew he was not stupid or foolish, but sometimes Molly’s behavior simply bewildered him. For the past few days, all she could talk about was the lunar festival approaching, something about viewing the moon with a mate and eating together. He drummed his fingers on the rock side of the spa. Why was she so concerned with this mortal festival, with the intricacies like who asked whom to attend… He suddenly realized. He huffed at himself, annoyed that it took him so long to realize, and rose from the spa to go and ask Molly if she’d like to view the moon together, with him.

\----

At some point, Ford thought distantly, he had obviously lost the thread of this conversation; it was the only way he could explain his current predicament: Holly had said… She loved him???

He thought, That just doesn’t make sense, and realized belatedly that he’d said that out loud when Holly blushed and fiddled with the pendant she’d held out to him a moment ago when she said that nonsensical thing. “Not that you’re not, I mean, I don’t…” he stammered, wanting to avoid hurting her feelings. He wanted so badly not to hurt her feelings. “It’s merely, you must be mistaken, you could love someone so much better than me.”

And she, beautiful Holly, kind and sweet and thoughtful Holly, dangled the pendant in front of his eyes and leaned forward, teasing, “Maybe, but you know, you’re the one I love, you big dork.”

\----

It was a special kind of torture to be so close to the one she loved but unable to tell her the truth; Kasumi swallowed her lovesick sigh as she watched Komari, as animated as ever, talk about a new recipe she was perfecting. “Mm, and then extra sugar?” Kasumi said distractedly, only half-hearing what Komari was saying. Why couldn’t she just be brave enough to tell her how she felt?

“Yeah,” Komari said, leaning in close suddenly;. Kasumi blinked in surprise. “An’ then I give the cookies to you!” Komari said, pushing a small red box into Kasumi’s hands. Kasumi looked down and her mouth fell open in shock when she read the message written delicately on the sugar cookies: _Will you go on a date with me, Kasumi?_

\----

“Wha- What did you say?” Chase stammered, obviously caught off guard by the question.

Angela raised her eyebrows and smirked at him. She knew he hadn’t misheard her; it was quiet in the bar after hours, and it was just the two of them, everyone else tucked back in their beds for the night. At her grin, Chase’s cheeks went even redder.

“I said, did you know you’re cute when you’re flustered?” Angela said very slowly, clearly, his mouth hanging open in the most adorable expression of surprise. She stepped closer, into his arms, and as if without thinking his hands went to her hips, holding her even while his jaw dropped even more. “Oh,” she added with a wink, “and did you know you’re also incredibly sexy?”

\----

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess.” Maya glanced over at Chase at the sheer exhaustion in his voice. He’d been overzealous, he told her, overcompensated in trying to experiment with new muffin recipes and now the kitchen was overflowing. All through the kitchen were stacks upon stacks of muffins, dozens upon dozens, and in Chase’s arms was the last batch of batter that he’d halted when he realized how far he’d really gone. His expression looked at once proud and horrified at the vast array of baked goods he’d created without realizing how many he’d made.

Maya giggled and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, saying, “Why don’t you finish that batch and I’ll start getting these sorted so I can tell you my opinions as I eat these, huh?”

\----

Angela could feel her cheeks growing red, her eyes wide, and she stammered, unable to respond. Owen looked at her quizzically and repeated his question. “Um, I finished making that new tool, so is there anything else of yours you want me to hammer?”

Then his cheeks went red, like he was hearing it, too.

“Just me,” Angela blurted before she could stop herself, and then clapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she spat out, but before she could say more, Owen was laughing and then so was she, and maybe they were both terrible at flirting, but it would make quite a story to tell their children later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was for readers to send me a pairing and the first line of a fic, then I'd write the next five lines. Some of the responses are below!


	51. Sunshine: Harvest King x Molly

The Harvest King kept himself occupied with order. So when Molly missed her daily visit up the mountain to see him one Friday (not that he’d asked her to start coming in the first place – she started doing it on her own, not that it bothered him), it perplexed him. If she was going to start a habit, she should stick with it. He was a being of order, and so rather despite himself, he’d grown used to putting aside his work as dusk came, listening for the sound of the portal he’d created to bring Molly up near his peak. And when yesterday evening she didn’t arrive, well, it threw off his entire dusk routine, leading into the next day being disrupted.

And to make matters even more disorderly, Molly showed up the following afternoon, wearing heavy sunglasses (unlike her) and a roomy sweater and loose pants. Was her hair mussed? The Harvest King was in the middle of a task when he heard the familiar whooshing sound that announced the farmer’s arrival to the peak.

Alan chirped up, “Ooh, it’s Molly!” and the other sprites gave similar sounds of delight before the Harvest King could quite recover himself, looking up at the farmer with feigned mild interest. As if it would never, ever occur to him to notice that Molly hadn’t visited yesterday, he said, “What brings you to the mountain, mortal?” There, he hardly ever called her ‘mortal’ anymore – probably this was a good time to remind her that he didn’t likely even remember her name.

Molly winced, and the Harvest King blinked, looking concerned for a moment despite himself. “Are you harmed?” he asked. “Ill?” Was she moving more slowly than she normally did…? That wasn’t good. Was she already growing ‘old,’ as humans did? Was this how it started, wincing and moving slowly?

Molly rubbed the side of her head and said, “No, King, I’m… I’m fine. Mostly. Just a little hungover.” She dug in her pocket for a moment and brought out a shining apple; she tossed it to him as he walked closer (trying to recover some of his dignity, he walked slowly, at least), and he passed it onto the Harvest Sprites, who immediately started laughing with delight and splitting it among them.

“Hungover? Hung over what?” the Harvest King repeated, confused. He’d never really heard those words put in that order before… Was it a human saying for ill? The Gods never got ill, of course, nor even the little half-gods like the Wizard or Witch in town.

Molly sat down with a low grunt by the Harvest King’s pedestal, and without thinking, he sat down beside her on the ground, looking at her in concern, studying her face as if he could figure out what the words meant on his own.

Molly turned her chin to him, then grinned and chuckled, leaning her head back against the stone. “Don’t worry, King, I’m fine. I’m not dying or anything. It’s just a hangover… Wait, right, do you know what a hangover is?”

“Of course,” the Harvest King said in his indignant voice that meant he did not know what she was talking about.

“Right,” Molly chuckled. “A hangover is when a human drinks too much alcohol and it throws off their system. You get a headache, sometimes, and sometimes nausea, and sometimes both. And bright lights or loud noises can make the headache worse, and some smells or too much movement can make the nausea worse. Does that make sense?”

The Harvest King nodded, even though he still wasn’t completely sure. “And… And why did you imbibe so much alcohol, then, if it makes you feel so ill to do so?” he asked. She never made him feel silly or stupid, asking these questions, even if he still preferred not to if he could help it. He was the Harvest King – better to seem like he knew what he was doing, right?

“Oh, it’s fun being drunk, sometimes,” Molly laughed, then blushed in that pretty way that she had, the way that made her smile seem bigger… Er, that human way of doing things. “I was with Owen and Luke and Kathy, and we all got really goofy, singing, laughing.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s… Yeah, it’s still not healthy, and definitely not for kids. It can mess up your brain. But…” She sighed, leaned her cheek against the cold rock, and for a moment, the Harvest King’s breath caught in his throat. It had seemed like she might lean her cheek against his shoulder, for a moment there. Why would that make him want to stop breathing? “You’re lucky,” she continued, “that you can’t get hung over.”

“I also cannot get drunk from spirits,” the Harvest King added, and Molly blinked.

“Really?” she asked. “I mean, that’s probably better for you, too. But…” She cut herself off again and chuckled. “I’m a bad influence, ignore me.”

He couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, but her chin dipped a little further as she leaned against the rock, as if she was dozing a little. “What?” he pressed. If she was going to tell him something, she should just stick with it and push through and tell him. Not because he was dying to know, not because he just liked to hear her talk, but because, well, that was what you did! You were supposed to follow through and finish sentences, not leave your listener wondering what was on your mind. And certainly you shouldn’t tell people to ignore you, even if they didn’t want to.

“Ugh, all right. But remember, you can’t get drunk, so it doesn’t really matter. I guess, it’s only, that it’s fun to be a little tipsy. When your limbs feel loose, and you just sort of say what’s on your mind, and you’re not frightened…”

“That sounds frightening itself,” the Harvest King said without thinking, then froze, wondering if Molly had heard him properly. A God of the world shouldn’t act as if speaking aloud would be frightening, of all things… She didn’t seem to have heard him and didn’t respond too seriously.

“It can be. And it’s not for everyone. It’s certainly not for me all the time. I completely missed coming up here yesterday, and this morning I woke up at eight o’clock. Eight! A full two hours late, I’ve been running around playing catch-up all morning.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I did have fun, though.” She yawned and shifted against the rock as if she was snuggling down into blankets. “I think I’m… I think I’m just going to nap for a moment here, if that’s all right,” she said, and her voice sounded sleepy.

The Harvest King nodded, unsure of what else to to say; he moved his hand and a wall of stone moved behind Molly, making sure that even if she jumped up in her sleep and started to run, she couldn’t accidentally fall down the mountain. Within a few moments, she was making quiet sounds, breathing through her nose, almost like gasps.

“She’s snoring!” Ben giggle-whispered from the pedestal, and the Harvest King hushed him with a gesture.

She was sleeping so soundly… The stone could hardly be a comfortable place to rest. The Harvest King waited for a moment to see if she would stir (she’d said she would only nap for a moment, right?) but when she tilted sideways, her head leaning on his shoulder, he realized she was well and truly asleep. Completely unconscious. And he couldn’t let her just sleep here, could he? Surely it would be terribly uncomfortable. He’d better get her home.

Carefully, gingerly, trying not to disturb or awake her, he lifted her from the stone in his arms, and she leaned against his shoulder with a little sigh. He wasn’t prone to leaving the mountain, wasn’t wont to deal much with mortals… But, well, Molly was different. She’d been visiting him for seasons now, nearly a year. He could do her this one turn, this one good favor. A boon, even.

Steadily, gently, the Harvest King brought Molly home with a flash of magic, carrying her to her bed and laying her down on it softly. She’d sleep, that was good. Maybe he could send some sprites to help take care of her livestock, depending on how long she slept? It made the Harvest King feel strange, standing in her house for too long (like an invasion of her privacy, like he wanted her to share this with him on purpose, not on accident) so he left her home quickly, headed back to his mountain peak, wondering… Wondering what it was like to be drunk, with Molly talking about it like that. Wondering what that strange, looser feeling was that she was talking about. He’d never felt anything like that, in his centuries of life. What would it be like to not be in absolute control of everything he wanted to be…?

He thought about it for an hour or two on the mountain before he decided… Well, he was the Harvest King, he could decide to do whatever he wanted. He could decide to think of things however he wanted to, he could decide to experiment, he could decide, if he wanted to, for maybe just an hour or two, to let himself be able to be intoxicated…

Something to think on.

———

Molly woke up with a groan in the twilight of her farmhouse, and she blinked for several moments in the dim light before she realized she couldn’t remember how she made it here. She’d gone out with Owen, Luke, and Kathy last night… And then she’d woken up this morning, blearily stumbled through her chores. And then…

Oh, Goddess. She’d visited the Harvest King, brought him an apple. What had they talked about…? She frowned and flung an arm over her eyes, trying to recall. She’d had such a headache… Right, she’d told him about being hungover, apologized about missing their meeting yesterday (whatever he said, however he’d acted, she knew he’d missed her, she knew he had wanted her to come and had been cross with her that she hadn’t). And… And she’d dozed off? She remember sitting down against the stone of the mountain and she’d talked about what being drunk was like, and then she’d dozed off. Her head had hurt so much, she’d just fallen asleep.

Hmm.

He must have brought her back down here. She knew he could teleport himself anywhere he wanted on the island – he’d told her as much, and demonstrated it, and still he kept up there on the mountain peak under the pretense of getting more ‘God work’ done, whatever that meant.

Slowly, Molly sat up in the darkness of her bedroom. Her head felt better, at least… Must be an effect of getting more sleep, or maybe even of being near the Harvest King for a while. It was speculated in town, after all, that the water of the Goddess’ Spring could heal and ease pains. Maybe it was the effect of the gods that did that. She stretched in her bed, feeling her joints ease a little looser – her stomach still felt a little upset, but she didn’t know if that was because of the hangover or because she hadn’t eaten in…

She checked the time. Goddess, it was nearly eight o’clock at night – her poor animals, they’d been stuck outside! Normally they wanted to be asleep by now… At the foot of the bed, her dog looked at her with interest, as if surprised that she was alive. She patted his head and stumbled out of bed, feeling a little groggy on her feet as she headed outside and… Wait, where were her animals? And what was making that howling sound? Not exactly howling – it didn’t sound like a creature in pain, but almost like a person yelling…? Molly went to her coop and poked her head in – all the birds were asleep in their nests. Frowning, she checked the barn and, yes, all the barn animals were asleep and inside, too. Who’d done that? Who’d rung the bell to bring all the creatures in?

“Aaaaaawoooooo!!”

Molly jumped and whirled around, which definitely gave her stomach an unpleasant lurch. There, that howling, yelling sound again. If not one of her animals complaining about sleeping outside, then what?

Behind her, sitting on the porch to the right of her front door, Molly spotted a spark of reddish-orange, almost like flame. She moved closer, almost tiptoeing, preparing to blow her whistle and summon help…

On her porch, the Harvest King sat with a great glass jug between his legs, which were spread out wide on either side of him. Molly flushed and looked away – togas were NOT meant to be sat in that way and it wasn’t exactly serving him well. He looked up at her as she came closer and grinned hugely, so huge that it startled her for a moment. What was he doing? What sort of game was this, what sort of disguise was he hiding behind? As she stared at him, he waved a hand in a clumsy circle and the glass jug between his thighs (surely it was at least as big as Molly’s head…) suddenly filled with a dark red liquid.

Oh.

The Harvest King opened his mouth and lifted the jug and sucked down at least a good two inches from the jug of wine. “Aaaaaaaahhh, Molly!” he cried when he finished drinking, looking at her with that bright smile. He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and moved the jug (REALLY avert the eyes, Molly thought) to his side. He lurched to his feet and wobbled for a moment – Molly reached out and caught his hand to keep him from falling, and he grinned at her again.

“Molly!” he boomed again. Was his voice always so loud? Or did it just sound louder with all that emotion in it, all that joy? “There you are! I was wondering where you’d gone, and this, erp, this was where I saw you last!” Still gripping Molly’s hand (for balance, or…?), he tilted back far enough to reach down and grab his jug, bringing it to his lips for another great swig. “You were right, Molly, being drunk is ever so much fun!” he laughed.

Molly raised an eyebrow. What was he talking about? “I thought gods didn’t get drunk,” she asked slowly, still gripping his hand. She didn’t want him to fall over – for all she knew, he’d accidentally light her house on fire.

At her shoulder, Finn (who’d been napping in her house for most of the day, after her drunken escapades) whispered, “Why is he acting that way?”

“King, are you feeling okay?” Molly asked, and the Harvest King grinned at her and nodded. Were the flames and brightness around him a more yellowy color than normal? She’d known him for so long, and she couldn’t think of a time when she’d seen that kind of yellow spark, that golden tinge to the lights that always followed him around.

“I feel grand!” the Harvest King said jovially, squeezing her hand a little. “I feel bright and sunny and airy and grand! I feel, skies, Molly, it has been at least an hour since I had a single thought for the divinations or the weather or the sprites or Selphia or any of the thousand little things, none of them, Molly! I haven’t thought of any of them.” He laughed and tilted his head back, his hair spilling messily, beautifully, around his face and shoulders. “I suppose now I have, but only in listing the thousand little worries that keep me from looking around, so much of the time.” He peered at her, eyes bright and cheerful. Molly’s breath caught – he was beautiful, of course he was beautiful, he had always been beautiful, but in joy, in easy, laughing joy, he was radiant. He was the sun.

“Why don’t you come inside?” she asked gently, tugging at his hand a little. He moved forward, turning what would look like a stumble from anyone else into a graceful slide from the porch to the ground beside her. But still, she knew him well enough to recognize that he’d stumbled, stumbled to stand right beside her, their chests nearly touching, only a breath away from her, flowers growing around his bare feet. He was so tall, so broad, bright and nearly blinding so close to her. He looked down at her, a softness, a happiness in his eyes. For a moment, Molly could only look back up to him, still holding his hand, standing so close to him that she wanted to close the distance, wanted to feel how warm his skin was…

He wobbled a little and Molly remembered that he’d decided to make this strange, strange feeling, that he’d decided to let himself get drunk tonight, for some reason.

Well. Because she’d told him it would feel good.

“I think we’d better get you home, big guy,” Molly said gently. She smiled up at him, and despite herself, she kissed his cheek.

“But I’d rather stay here with you, Molly,” the Harvest King said, blinking at her. When she kissed his cheek, his smile softened and he said, “And I like it when you kiss my cheek. I want you to do it again.”

Molly blushed brightly and shook her head. “We’d better get you back home,” she told him, though she smiled. “And tomorrow, when I come visit you, I’ll tell you all about what you said tonight.”

——–

Glaring at the bright, sunny sky, the Harvest King growled, “Why must everything up here be so loud and glaring all the time?” The Harvest Sprites had been staying well out of his way all day, ever since he’d woken up this morning (even sleeping was new, where had that come from?). The Harvest King had been grumpy and easily annoyed, snapping at every dust mote or leaf that crossed his path and made his head pound or his stomach lurch. Why, why in the name of the sun and stars, had he decided to try his stupid, immature experiment yesterday? What in the material plane had made him sign up for this terrible, terrible feeling? And the worst was, as the Harvest Goddess kept uncharitably reminding him, he couldn’t make it all go away. Once his stomach had settled and his head had cleared, once all effects of the alcohol had gone, then he could restore himself, his imperviousness to the effects of alcohol. Once he felt normal again, then, he could go back to never, ever feeling this awful feeling ever again. When he’d stopped by the Harvest Goddess’s spring to ask, just in case, if she knew anything about this sort of thing, why the magic wasn’t fixing it, she’d seemed almost satisfied. Or at least, amused. And that was altogether unfair.

There was a whooshing sound and the Harvest King winced, glancing up. Was it dusk already? Somehow this day had felt like it was years long, and yet at the same time, he was surprised that it was already time for sunset. For…

“Molly.” The Harvest King all but growled the name, a statement, a snarl. The farmer rolled her eyes at him (rolled her eyes!) and walked up toward the dais.

“Hey, big guy,” she greeted, and he blinked at her, startled. What had she called him? Why did that remind him of something…? She walked closer and opened her rucksack, pulling out what looked like a bottle of water, a piece of cake, and a loaf of bread. “I brought you some things in case you were hungover,” she said, coming up to where he sat on the dais. Normally he stood, but today… “Are you hungover? Or could you just whisk that away?”

He glared at her, and she giggled, she GIGGLED! She giggled at him, and he glared. Glared more so than usual, anyway. He’d been narrowing his eyes all day to avoid the blasted sunshine.

“You should have told me how awful hangovers are,” he answered finally, and he turned around on his dais, pretending to be absorbed with something in the air. But he listened for Molly behind him, hearing her come closer, hearing her walk up onto his dais (the cheek!).

She stood beside him and handed him the loaf of bread, the cake. “Here,” she said, and when he looked at her, she was smiling kindly. “Eat these. They’ll help settle your stomach. Then, you’ll drink this entire water bottle. Part of what happens when you drink is that you get dehydrated, which gives you that headache.”

He blinked at her. Would it really help…? Ah, skies, better to try it, just about anything that would help with this terrible feeling in his gut and brain.

She sat with him while he ate, while he drank, and in the years to come, she’d tease him about the look on his face when the food started to help, when he started to feel a bit better. And it wouldn’t be for years, it wouldn’t be until she was older and their children had grown, that she would tell him of all the little things he said on her porch that night, the brightness to him, the way it matched his shine on their wedding day. How when she’d held his hand and stood so close to him, she’d fallen in love. She’d fallen in love with the drunken, happy sunshine of him and the grumpy, sullen hungover cloud that he was the next day.

And he’d tell her that she was a silly mortal and he loved her more than life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's an old anon request for a fic about what the Harvest King would be like drunk and/or hungover!


	52. Lisette x Wayne x Ford Headcanons

Lisette sending her boys flowers and Wayne delivering them with kisses

Wayne gets sick and passes it to Lisette and Ford worrying over them until he gets sick too

Wayne sending love letters to Ford and Lisette signed from each other and they immediately know the letters are from Wayne because they’re addressed “To My Darlin’”

Lisette waking up first and making flower crowns for her boys in their sleep

Ford’s nights to make dinner are always Very Healthy and Wayne tries to sneak in fatty stuff but Lisette tattles on him

Wayne saying “special delivery” and Lisette and Ford kiss him on the cheeks

Tangled Cuddle Piles

Wayne and Ford getting down on one knee to call Lisette their Princess

Wayne and Lisette surprising Ford at work with lunch and kisses and even though he always acts like it’s an irritation he loves it

At the Starry Night festival Megan tells them they can’t all three go in the hot air balloon at once, so they all stay on the ground together in Protest

When Ford has panic attacks, Wayne cuddles him while Lisette makes calming tea and they just hold him until it passes

Ford and Lisette working together to write a new fairytale starring the Brave Knight Wayne

Tthey are collectively referred to as the Blondes by Westown folks, Wayne and Lisette love it and Ford hates it

So Wayne and Lisette will sometime tease him by calling him Captain Blonde, Leader of the Blondes

It has devolved into just calling him CB sometimes and the rest of Westown doesn’t get it but they DO know that if you go into the clinic and ask to speak to “Dr. CB” you’ll hear a scream from wherever Ford is

Lisette and Ford collaborating on new herbal medicines; at first Ford wasn’t sure about the whole thing but then he started to track the science at work and now he’s regularly commissioning certain herbs and flowers from Lisette

On Lisette’s birthday Wayne and Ford make her breakfast in bed and borrow the farmer’s horse so they can gallop up as her Knights – they all three try to fit on the horse but someone keeps sliding off the back (plus, poor horse, the farmer scolded them) so now there’s Lisette on the horse and Wayne and Ford take turns either leading the horse or riding with her

Lisette doesn’t always realize when other men are flirting with her, so Wayne will be in charge of escorting someone out of the flower shop for being too pushy before Ford starts Squashing Insects

Speaking of, Ford uses Science™ to make a specialized organic insect repellant for Lisette that’s more effective than anything else she’s ever used, the farmer keeps hinting about getting some but Ford says “no, that’s Lisette’s blend only”

Wayne loves calling Ford his hubby and Lisette his wifey, everyone who comes into the post office has to look at the million pictures of them that he keeps in his wallet

Lisette makes special bouquets inspired by her boys and when she shows them, Wayne thinks they’re adorable and Ford just straight up cries

While he’s at work, between patients, Ford will sometimes daydream and accidentally doodle “FLW” and “Ford Loves Wayne” and “Ford Loves Lisette” without realizing it and it always embarrasses him

Wayne brings back little presents and souveniers from the towns where he delivers mail and leaves them hidden through the house for his hubby and wifey to find

Ford still calls Lisette and Wayne by their regular names, mostly, but now and then he’ll use ridiculously adorable pet names like “cutie pie” or “pumpkin” or “sugarpea” and even as Lisette and Wayne tease him relentlessly they love it

At the Goddess Festival, the Blondes form the first, innovative, three-person Dancing Team

Lisette talks in her sleep and Wayne thinks it’s hilarious and has conversations with her until Ford makes him go back to sleep

Wayne will do something cute like call Ford “darlin’ hubby” or “Dr. Cutebutt” and Ford will flush and mutter under his breath that he doesn’t understand how can he be so cute

Lisette chattering to anyone who will talk to her for five minutes about how handsome and smart and strong and kind her boys are – everyone in Westown has heard her whole schpiel over and over and they don’t care, she’s so excited and cute every time

People will comment to Lisette sometimes that they’re jealous of her man and she’ll say “which one?”

Someone passing through town made a rude comment once about Ford and Wayne put his hand on the guy’s shoulder and just calmly said “Rethink that, friend” and the guy left town and has Never Come Back

Lisette likes things way sweeter than Ford or Wayne but Wayne will still regularly bring back cakes for her and eat them so she won’t feel silly eating alone

They can often be seen walking around holding hands in a line, and they have to take Organized Turns over who gets to be the middle because otherwise it’s always Wayne, he’s a Charmer

Lisette sprained her ankle walking home once and Ford fussed over her, carrying her around wherever she needed to go while Wayne took care of housework

When they’re talking about having a child, Lisette and Wayne are pretty chill but Ford does All the Research and starts reading constantly about child rearing and now he can basically diagnose emotional and logical development in a child of any age. To annoy Wayne he’ll say things like “ah, yes, this is just like a certain emotional stage toddlers go through”

Lisette will occasionally steal Wayne’s hat and Ford’s coat and go “look, I’m both my husbands,” and laugh hysterically, no one else finds it as funny as she does

Lisette sometimes has nightmares and cries in her sleep; Ford will wake her up and make her tea to calm her down because he’s familiar with night terrors

Ford has had so many nightmares in his time that he doesn’t really cry out anymore, just wake up with a gasp. He’s been having fewer nightmares since he moved in with Lisette and Wayne, but when he does occasionally have a nightmare that wakes him up, he turns over in bed and seeing his loves’ sleeping faces calms him down

Ford is the Tallest and Wayne and Lisette will both holler for him to come get things off the tall shelves

Wayne is usually the most upbeat of the three, so when he has a Bad Day Lisette and Wayne both go into Comfort Mode and divert all resources into cheering him up  
when Ford is sick Lisette and Wayne don’t really know what to do but they Try and Ford tries to correct what they’re doing wrong and just resigns himself to their good-hearted care

Wayne writes terrible poetry to his darlin’s and gets too embarrassed to give them, but he can still recite a lot of them from memory and does so when he’s drunk

Lisette is definitely the first of the three to say “I love you.”Wayne goes “oh thank heaven I been waitin’ for someone else to say it, I’ve wanted to say it since day one but I didn’t wanna be weird. ”Ford has trouble getting the words out even though he feels them, which Lisette and Wayne both know, but they don’t give him a hard time and just wait until he tells them he loves them in some quiet moment

Wayne has been known to want to Duel people (”like, ya know, fisticuffs,” he insists) who are rude to his darlin’s

When Lisette cries, Wayne can’t handle it and starts crying too, leaving Ford to bring tissues and comfort

Ford is bad at presents, which makes him feel bad because Lisette and Wayne are both so good at finding things for him. He gets help for an anniversary finally from Frank and Miranda and when Lisette and Wayne love what he got, he does a little fist pump and goes yes

Ford loves watching dramas and tragedies, which make Lisette sad, so Wayne is in charge of covering her ears and telling her “no no the puppy is fine, don’t look, but she’s fine and now they’re sending her to the farm with the kid’s mom”

Wayne hugs his darlin’s all the time, Lisette gives hugs and kisses, and Ford likes to kiss foreheads gently

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that I believed Lisette, Wayne, and Ford would be an amazing triad, so here are a bunch of headcanons I had!


End file.
